Multitasking: Missing the Point?

Posted on October 1, 2009
Filed Under Heidegger, Philosophy, Science | 1 Comment

402CE6BB-8EBC-4A0C-BA5A-0DCF0038F4E4.jpgChris sent me an interesting story last week regarding the multitasking debate. It asks whether multitasking studies are missing the point. You probably recall the discussions on studies that those who multitask do more poorly than those who single task. Which, I think we all already knew from our personal experience. (I was honestly surprised so many were surprised at the multitasking conclusions)

The counter argument is about what some call “flow.”

One big problem multitaskers face is that their brains don’t filter out interference. That is one task will “contaminate” the other tasks. What the flow proponents more or less suggest is that this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. That is the point in multitasking isn’t merely to get things done but to get things right. I’m not sure “right” is the right word and I find the analogies to art informative but perhaps a bit misleading.

Clearly multitasking leads to a more integrated experience of the disparate processes and information. It changes how we enjoy processes and the meanings they have. The contamination ends up being a kind of intertextuality at a low, typically unconscious level.

Read the original post and tell me what you think.

I immediately thought of Heidegger’s work in Being and Time and how our recognition of objects as things present to us (what he calls “present at hand”) arises out of a set of background practices of coping and use. If this is right then in multitasking we place things in new contexts of practices that enable us to see them in new light. While multitasking might be poor in terms of getting things done (what Heidegger calls objects that are ready at hand – say a paint brush used while painting) the very failures that multitasking engenders enables us to better understand things. They become presented to us more authentically.

What a lot of people miss in Heidegger is that this authentic presentation isn’t always what we ought seek. Put an other way, sometimes we ought be focused on getting things done. (I say as I’m avoiding doing some data entry and am writing a blog post – the classic example of multitasking)

Related posts:

  1. Consensus
  2. Levinas, Heidegger & Objects
  3. Heidegger on Art
  4. Heidegger, Humans and Language
  5. Heidegger and Science
  6. Does Heidegger Reify Language?

Comments

One Response to “Multitasking: Missing the Point?”

This post on Heidegger and multitasking is interesting as well. There the argument is that we can’t multitask because focus is tied to care and we just can’t shift the contexts of all the things involved in caring for something quickly. We can only focus on a thing at a time.

Of course multitasking is the shifting of what we focus on between multiple objects. So I don’t think this avoids what I was getting at above. In effect what we are doing is moving objects and processes into a new context of caring. And it’s interesting what happens. (This is the same reason I can use objects for different purposes)

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