Multitasking hurts your memory, creates stress, and costs time. That, according to Walter Kirn in the current issue of The Atlantic. The piece is clever, but far too jumpy (I think he was using his prose style to analogize to multitasking), and he didn't present enough facts. Still, it's good stuff and kind of supports what I've written about multitasking (1, 2). Excerpts:
Through a variety of experiments, many using functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity, [scientists have] torn the mask off multitasking and revealed its true face, which is blank and pale and drawn.
Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires–the constant switching and pivoting–energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we're supposed to be concentrating on. . . .
Even worse, certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy.
The next generation, presumably, is the hardest-hit. They're the ones way out there on the cutting edge of the multitasking revolution, texting and instant messaging each other while they download music to their iPod and update their Facebook page and complete a homework assignment and keep an eye on the episode of The Hills flickering on a nearby television. (A recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 53 percent of students in grades seven through 12 report consuming some other form of media while watching television; 58 percent multitask while reading; 62 percent while using the computer; and 63 percent while listening to music. “I get bored if it's not all going at once,” said a 17-year-old quoted in the study.) They're the ones whose still-maturing brains are being shaped to process information rather than understand or even remember it. . . .
A brain attempting to perform two tasks simultaneously will, because of all the back-and-forth stress, exhibit a substantial lag in information processing. . .
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I like it when bloggers come up with unique ways to promote their blogs and the blogosphere, especially if it doesn't involve memes. The Ironic Catholic has a good series: Blog Humorists. Check it out. The entertaining Jeff Miller was yesterday's guest. I haven't gotten the nod yet. I'm sure it's an oversight.
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Another good nugget from Sean Dailey at The Blue Boar:
To be called Processus Contra Templarios -- Papal Inquiry into the Trial of the Templars, the book will be about 300 pages and "comes in a soft leather case that includes a large-format book including scholarly commentary, reproductions of original parchments in Latin, and -- to tantalize Templar buffs -- replicas of the wax seals used by 14th-century inquisitors." According to the article, "One parchment measuring about half a meter wide by some two meters long is so detailed that it includes reproductions of stains and imperfections seen on the originals."
Price tag: A modest $8,377. Looks like I'll have to wait for the DVD.
