Multi-tasking

Multitasking, as a term applied to people, did not exist before Microsoft Windows.

But now we use the term, thinking we can multitask like computers.

I read a study of a client trying to do three things at a time -- talking on the phone, conversing face to face and answering e-mail -- and not accomplishing any of the three tasks in the course of an hour. Handling the tasks separately, she finished all three in 13 minutes.

But actually with people, it means interrupting one task with another.

So there’s the interruption itself, then the recovery time.

Recovery time’s been measured at 10 times the length of the interruption.

So the IM interruption/interaction lasts 30 seconds.

Then it takes 5 min for you to get back to where you were mentally.

20 years, ago, interruptions were phone calls, mail being delivered once a day, the annoying co-worker who would lean against your door frame to tell you about his weekend.

Today it’s that plus email notifications, IM, web-alerts – more interruptions.

A quarter of an office worker’s time is lost to interruptions and recovery time.

That’s only the ‘knowledge’ workers – with 65m knowledge workers in the US and an average salary of $21 per hour, that’s about a trillion a year lost from a GDP of 15T per year.

Now what if you had inSyte? People IM you all day long. You get email notifications in your head all day long.

Not to mention browsing continuously.

So you would have to fight the tendency to be caught in a constant round of task-switching – going from site to site, email to email, IM to IM. At the end of the day you think, man was I busy all day. But what did you accomplish?

Be a shame to accomplish less than you would without inSyte.

So we would need better tools to filter out the interruptions.

How about the guy who won’t leave his blackberry alone for 5 min while you’re trying to have a F2F?

What would inSyte do to personal conversations? On the one hand, it would raise the productivity because you don’t have to worry about memorizing facts anymore. So it elevates the level of the mind, frees us to focus on higher levels of thought. On concepts, critical thinking.

On the other hand, can you have a simple conversation? Or would you be continually interrupted?

Again – we would need the proper tools to filter out interruptions.

Upside, sure. How about downside?

The upside to technology is inherently obvious. The ultimate usefulness of personal computers to the business world is undeniable - especially compared to previous paper-based methods. 12 people can do what 100 did before computers, that sort of thing. Even Greenspan eventually acknowledged the role IT technology played during the nineties on productivity and GDP.

But what about the downside?

My book turns inSyte into a drug metaphor that my main character gets hooked on. Sort of a natural progression of our dependency on the technology we have today. You leave your house without your cell phone for a 5 minute trip to the store and maybe that’s OK. But if you’re going out for 4 hours and know you’re going to be spending much of that time in waiting areas – well, you’re turning your car around because you’re dependent on the smartphone.

Read below for an excerpt from my novel, inSyte. In my next blog, I'll explore some of the downsides to technology today.

He needed to turn on. Losing the ability to search the Grid as part of his memory left him feeling incomplete, unsure… empty. He wanted it back. For himself. InSyte was his and it had been taken.

Mitch remembered reading an article as a kid that described highly addictive online computer games. The article listed case after case of poor sad sacks who chose games over true life. A thirty six year old lost his job and destroyed his marriage. The man was not much of a role model to his young children, but he progressed to Level fifty-eight as Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North Land. That’s all that mattered.

A word was coined to describe such electronic addiction – heroinware. Online self-help groups sprung up to deal with the fallout. Online forums swelled with refugees from online worlds. All had harrowing stories of runaway gaming habits, lives ruined, friends lost, marriages broken. Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North Land, was so obsessed over getting to level sixty that he fatally neglected his youngest child and the game was implicated in the death of the infant.

Game manufacturers were analogized to drug dealers. The first dose was free. Download and play. If you like it then, you know, come back and register, dude. Plenty more where that came from.

Mitch smiled like a man who’d gone all in, everything he had. More than he had. All he would ever have. Then watched his four aces get beat by an improbable straight flush. Because of the wild cards. The Joker. Casinos called them bugs. He had developed a physical dependency to the Grid. His Grid. He tried to avoid the word addiction. He’d thought the chemical that Russian bastard used in the parking garage caused his cramping and nausea. Now he knew better.

He tried to look online for an old Steppenwolf song and felt momentary panic, like a man reaching for his pack of cigarettes who finds an empty shirt pocket. Mitch tried to remember the lyrics and couldn’t. He shook his head and focused on searching his actual memories instead of the Grid. His mind resisted like it didn’t want to make the effort. Or had forgotten how. He concentrated harder and the lyrics came.

The pusher is a monster, not a natural man. Goin to sell you lots of sweet dreams. The pusher will ruin your body but he’ll leave your mind to scream. God Damn the pusher man.

OK, a little downside to inSyte. A technical hiccup, if you will, Mr. Buyer. Nothing to worry about. Sort of like biting into a juicy steak with a pink center that melts in your mouth and the only problem, minor point really, it’s crawling with death because it’s got this germ deep inside that will huff and puff and blow your house down.

But it’ll leave your mind to scream.

What about the weaknesses

What about the weaknesses

Many people get addicted to being online today. Imagine if you could be online all the time in your mind? My novel, inSyte, I present the technology metaphorically as a drug.

Here’s the scene describing when Mitch first gets it to work…

In the quarter century since that commercial aired, every recorded song had indeed been digitized. More than just music -- every book, magazine, research document, opinion paper, news article and blueprint. Twitter and blogs captured practically every new thought. Nothing short of the aggregate sum of all human knowledge developed and recorded over the past five thousand years down to the last bit and byte. And available to anyone who carried a micro smaller than a peanut. And that meant everyone.

If knowledge was power, Mitch had become the strongest man in the world.

What a rush. Wonderful. Awakened. Powerful. His mother would be so proud

He smiled and shook his head. Wait until the Buyer tasted this shit. It was almost too pure. Almost.

Toward the end of the novel, he, ahem, loses the ability to be online in his head. Here’s how I describe his thoughts and feelings…

He needed to turn on. Losing the ability to search the Grid as part of his memory left him feeling incomplete, unsure… empty. He wanted it back. For himself. InSyte was his and it had been taken.

Mitch remembered reading an article as a kid that described highly addictive online computer games. The article listed case after case of poor sad sacks who chose games over true life. A thirty six year old lost his job and destroyed his marriage. The man was not much of a role model to his young children, but he progressed to Level fifty-eight as Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North Land. That’s all that mattered.

A word was coined to describe such electronic addiction – heroinware. Online self-help groups sprung up to deal with the fallout. Online forums swelled with refugees from online worlds. All had harrowing stories of runaway gaming habits, lives ruined, friends lost, marriages broken. Madrid, the Great Shaman of the North Land, was so obsessed over getting to level sixty that he fatally neglected his youngest child and the game was implicated in the death of the infant.

Game manufacturers were analogized to drug dealers. The first dose was free. Download and play. If you like it then, you know, come back and register, dude. Plenty more where that came from.

Mitch smiled like a man who’d gone all in, everything he had. More than he had. All he would ever have. Then watched his four aces get beat by an improbable straight flush. Because of the fucking wild cards. The Joker. Casinos called them bugs. He had developed a physical dependency to the Grid. His Grid. He tried to avoid the word addiction. He’d thought the chemical that Russian bastard used in the parking garage caused his cramping and nausea. Now he knew better.

He tried to look online for an old Steppenwolf song and felt momentary panic, like a man reaching for his pack of cigarettes who finds an empty shirt pocket. Mitch tried to remember the lyrics and couldn’t. He shook his head and focused on searching his actual memories instead of the Grid. His mind resisted like it didn’t want to make the effort. Or had forgotten how. He concentrated harder and the lyrics came.

The pusher is a monster, not a natural man. Goin to sell you lots of sweet dreams. The pusher will ruin your body but he’ll leave your mind to scream. God Damn the pusher man.

OK, a little downside to inSyte. A technical hiccup, if you will, Mr. Buyer. Nothing to worry about. Sort of like biting into a juicy steak with a pink center that melts in your mouth and the only problem, minor point really, it’s crawling with death because it’s got this germ deep inside that will huff and puff and blow your house down.

But it’ll leave your mind to scream.

What about the social order?

What about the social order?

June 3, 2011

What are the implications? I mean, how do people interact with each another? You’re not talking about using a calculator you keep in your shirt pocket, here. You’re talking about giving people all the answers all the time. To any question. And it’s impossible to tell if that person’s smart as hell or just reading from the Grid. Or even paying attention? Christ!

Every civilization has a class system. Since the Greeks. Today the classes are separated by education.”

Meaning knowledge.

If suddenly everyone knows everything… well, that raises a lot of interesting questions.

How could people be satisfied with lower lots in life? Think about it. If you’re better at searches you’ll know more than your Doctor. You literally do a better, faster diagnosis.

Still, it’s not enough to know something. Experience plays a huge role. It’s not like I can read how to conduct open heart surgery and then go perform one. The how-to knowledge doesn’t help if I faint at the sight of blood. Same applies to flying an airplane.

And personalities will always dominate. I might have access to the same information as a businessman, but if he reads people better he’s going to close the sale and I’m not. A lot of factors differentiate people way beyond mere information. Sure, you’ve got to have the info to begin with. But how you deal with situations, interact with people, control emotion… those are real attributes that aren’t going away.

In war gaming, Red Team activity was used to reveal weaknesses in military readiness.

I’ve given you the strengths. Where are the weaknesses?