Multi-Tasking

The Digital Age has brought us to a new level of multi-tasking that supposedly improves how we act and react in the social milieu of the present age. When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, digital multi-tasking meant being able to pat your head with one hand while rubbing your tummy with the other. And that accomplishment certainly brought kudos from my peers. Of course we all multi-task as we see, hear, talk and walk around. Some of us can even chew gum while doing this.

Mothers know all about multi-tasking as they simultaneously look after a new borne, make an older child’s school lunch and dress hubby for work by selecting a non-clashing tie for him while putting a pot of soup stock on simmer. On the other hand, people who play 12 bingo cards at once are only doing repetitive tasking and this does not qualify.

Today, multi-tasking means be able to open several (more than 6) screens on your computer, flip through them in rapid succession, absorbing all kinds to important information while talking on the phone to your stock broker who is nonchalantly buying and selling your stock on-line through an array of open ‘windows’ on his or her computer. If you are completely comfortable with this scenario, you are part of the new digital age. Was that really spam you deleted from your email or was it a note from Aunt Bertha ([email protected]) who said she would put you back in her will if you would only answer her email?

If you have one of those televisions which can run split screens so you can watch the Bills take another licking on the gridiron while Martha Stewart reruns a show on how to make butter tarts with Rice Krispies while the weather person warns of yet more snow beside the CNN headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen, you have arrived. If you caught the interference call on that last pass just as your stock dropped ten basis points, you are a true multi-tasker.

If you can drive your car while talking on your cell phone and drinking your cuppa from Tim’s while changing a CD, you are multi-tasking. If, on the other hand, you nearly ran over that dog or was it a child? when your dearly beloved says you forgot to take out the garbage again, you need more training.

In the age of ten second sound bytes, are we truly multi-tasking if we are accepting all these bits of information as fact without questioning the veracity of any of them? Or are we becoming so reliant on tidbits (and Timbits) that we really don’t know what is happening around us? Are the people feeding us these little snippets of information any better informed than we are?

The argument from one multi-tasker I listened to as I drove home the other day is that these pieces of information have been thoroughly researched by others before they put them on the air or the internet. This is all right as long as they too, were not multi-tasking. But what if the person or organization who is feeding us these tidbits has a personal or corporate agenda that may be only for their good and not yours? Does a true multi-tasker take the time to stop and research the data or is that left to the people who are digitally challenged to get all the facts and present a thoughtful scenario or solution?

Quickly now, what time is it? Did you look at the time on your screen or at your Rolex? Please don’t tell me you looked at your cell phone to see the time. Better still, do you really care what time it is? If you are a multi-tasker, you really do care, because you must have so many things that you have to do in the next hour that every second counts. Or do you take a minute once in awhile to stop and smell the roses? Okay, so it’s winter – you can Google a rose and pretend for a minute.

What concerns me is that as we, the fortunate few in the world who have access to the digital world, depend more and more on these short sound and information spurts, that we are thinking less and less about that information. Were the 49% of Americans who voted for George in the last election misinformed that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9-11 attacks or did they believe it because someone, someone with a political agenda, slipped that into the initial newscasts after the attack? That it was later refuted had no impact on these people because they had heard and stored those first bytes of information.

How many American soldiers have died in Iraq? How many Iraqis have died? Google that information on the internet and tell me what this disparity in information tells you about the conflict in Iraq. What time is it? Is it still snowing outside? Was that last email from your boss? A true multi-tasker will have answered the last three questions without a pause, all the while considering what the heck is happening in Iraq based on one of the pop-up screens that gives CNN’s view of the war.

Don’t get me wrong on this multi-tasking. I am all in favour of it. Think how much more work would be accomplished if all our civil servants were multi-tasking. Just think of the money we could have saved on the Gun Registry if all the staff had used their multi-tasking skills! Ponder for a moment the savings at City Hall if one person could take your payment for hydro, water, tax, parking ticket and dog tag fee for Fluffy at the same time on one screen while you told them the information needed for another building permit. And give you the right change.

We have often been told that we are only using a small part of our brain’s capacity so we now know that much of that grey matter has been reserved for multi-tasking. We just have to learn how to use that capacity and it seems that the digital era is ushering in this new mental awareness. That only 10% of the world’s population have access to a computer should not slow us in our efforts to become wizards of the digital technology. Once we master this multi-tasking technique we can turn to saving the environment, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. Everything in its time.

Meanwhile, the next time I see someone reading Hawking’s World in a Nutshell as they drive down the highway at 120 kms in their leased BMW I will safely assume they are fully capable of multi-tasking. I will not slow down or pass them to put my usual ten-car buffer between them and my car or bike. I know that they are following the action on the road, ahead, behind and on both sides of them as they read and consider what Hawking is talking about as he mentions the reality of the 10th dimension. Besides, anyone discussing Hawking over their hands-free cell phone is definitely safety conscious.

Perhaps that is where all this multi-tasking is taking place – in another dimension.

I can still rub my tummy and pat my head at the same time. True digital multi-tasking! Or was I patting my tummy and rubbing my head?