Is Multi-Tasking Bad for The Brain

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Used to be, if you wanted to indicate somebody was really, really stupid, you could say, “He can’t chew gum and talk at the same time.” Now, maybe not. If chewing gum and talking at the same time is an example of multi-tasking, studies show that mono-tasking might be better.

I am not sure what multi-tasking is though I guess I do it more than I used to. It would seem to mean listening to music while answering emails and interrupting the email to IM.

The authors of a Stanford Study say however that the brain really can do only one thing well at a time. That would seem to be a physiological fact.

So they ran some experiments.

Sure enough, the multi-taskers (I guess these were self-identified as such) performed considerably worse at some very simple tasks than did mono-taskers.

One of the authors of the study said of multi-taskers, “They’re suckers for irrelevancy….Everything distracts them.”

And another says, “When they’re in situations where there are multiple sources of information coming from the external world or emerging out of memory, they’re not able to filter out what’s not relevant to their current goal…That failure to filter means they’re slowed down by that irrelevant information.”

But there’s a bit of a chicken-egg problem here. The researchers were not able to determine if multi-tasking clogs up the brain or if people who can’t concentrate anyway are drawn to multi-tasking.

I was visiting the class of another teacher. I was sitting with the students, and the student right next to me very surreptitiously checked his text messages at least five times during the hour I was there. I wonder if he heard what the teacher was saying. And the problem here wasn’t just the time paying attention to another stream of information; clearly the student anticipated getting text messages, and how much did that constant sense of anticipation run counter to his ability to concentrate. I know when I am anticipating something, I am not as present as I might otherwise be.

When I brought up this issue with my students, one said, were it not for multi-tasking she would not be able to stay awake during the lectures. They were so boring. But another said, it was amazing how much time one could pass on the web, and text messaging, and end up doing nothing. 

The Death of Reading and the First Paragraph of The Ambassadors

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Following Nicholas Carr, who argues that the net is changing the way we think, I argued that the net may prove the death of reading, qua reading, or as a particular kind of experience.

Certainly one reads on the web, but one reads for information. In one sense, this is very active reading; one is constantly clicking as one looks for a particular info bit. When I asked my students about how they use the web–whether or not that read entire articles–the whole point of the web, for them, seemed to be to avoid reading the whole article. One student said, I type in key words, I find the article, maybe I read the abstract if there is one, and then I use the “find function,” type in key words again and go straight to what I am looking for.

If this is how the web is teaching people to read, then something significant is also being lost.

I tried to indicate the nature of what might be lost–the experience itself of reading–by quoting the entire first paragraph of Henry James’ The Ambassadors and daring you, dear reader, to read it. The passage from James I felt would stick out like a sore thumb as the kind of writing that does not belong on the web. I wonder if any one read it.

I did several times and as proof, if one can call it that, I include here audio of me reading aloud the passage from James.
And if you want you can read it again:

Strether’s first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him bespeaking a room “only if not noisy,” reply paid, was produced for the enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound. The same secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not absolutely to desire Waymarsh’s presence at the dock, that had led him thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to make him feel he could still wait without disappointment. They would dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old Waymarsh–if not even, for that matter, to himself–there was little fear that in the sequel they shouldn’t see enough of each other. The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive–the fruit of a sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after so much separation, into his comrade’s face, his business would be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the nearing steamer as the first “note,” of Europe. Mixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether’s part, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in quite a sufficient degree.

I think there’s a good deal going on in this passage and that it can’t really be put into words other than the words into which it is put.

Strange to think that James hired at one point a Type Writer. I say hired because back then the person who worked the type writer was called the Type Writer. And James, consequently, dictated his later novels. That is amazing. What kind of concentration did it require to speak sentences of the kind found above.

Is the Web the Death of Reading?

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Reflecting on Nicholas Carr’s claim that the net has altered the way he thinks, I offered a contrast between the net as largely information passage and the experience of reading, qua that.

I tried to offer an example of what I meant. A rather poor one I think, and then I remembered, dimly, that I had written my master’s thesis on Henry James, a readerly writer if there ever was one.

I finished that dissertation in 1973 I think, and then in 1974, Peter Bagdonovich came out with the film version of James’ “Daisy Miller,” featuring Cybill Shepard. Boy, that was a long time ago, but I remember leaving the movie house disgusted. The rather horsy Cybill simply was not my Daisy. And that film–whatever else it might be–simply was not Henry James. Sure the guy had stolen the plot; innocent bullheaded young American women goes to Europe, doesn’t heed advice about how Europe is different, catches the flu and dies. That’s about it, plus some sort of moral. Awful flimsy stuff on which to hang a film. I have not consequently watched any of the other many films that have come out over the decades using James’ work.

You simply can’t watch a film of a work by James. James’ works are not watchable, only readable….if that.

Take the following. Try to read it (I dare you!). The first paragraph of James’ greatest novel, The Ambassadors:

Strether’s first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him bespeaking a room “only if not noisy,” reply paid, was produced for the enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound. The same secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not absolutely to desire Waymarsh’s presence at the dock, that had led him thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to make him feel he could still wait without disappointment. They would dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old Waymarsh–if not even, for that matter, to himself–there was little fear that in the sequel they shouldn’t see enough of each other. The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive–the fruit of a sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after so much separation, into his comrade’s face, his business would be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the nearing steamer as the first “note,” of Europe. Mixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether’s part, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in quite a sufficient degree.

A first paragraph like that does not belong on the web. No information at all is passed. Just the experience of Strether’s subjectivity, which to be experienced, must be read. Of course, while this might be true, the question remains: is this experience worth the time it takes to do it.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

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That’s the title to an article by Nicholas Carr that appeared in the July/August, 2009, Atlantic.

A student in my research paper writing class turned it up, and I read it.

Carr doesn’t conclude that Google makes us stupid. But in the course of making his argument, Carr recounts how his own reading habits have changed the more, over the years, he has used the internet. Sadly–or not–his experience parallels my own. He can speak for both of us:

Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I have read perhaps three or four books from start to finish over the last five years. The last time I did I was on vacation and away from my computer. It was on the Middle Ages and I rather enjoyed it, especially the part about Magellan and his sad end.

But mostly now if the argument is complicated or requires “de-coding” or is more than four or five pages long I start getting irritated and frustrated; and this from a guy who once read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind from beginning to end, and almost enjoyed it. Looking now at that or Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, I wonder how I ever did it, and doubt very much that I could do it now.

The way I would put it–and I think Carr puts it this way too–is that the net has turned everything into information. Sure you could read the Phenomenology of Mind, but why on earth would you want to do, when one can’t find all sorts of Cliff Notes summaries of the thing, and, heck, many of them are pretty accurate (as summary) but not of course the experience itself. The experience itself is pretty amazing. Hegel lays down a line of reasoning, follows it out completely, pulls you completely in, then pulls the rug out from under you as he makes a dialectical leap of some kind, and you are forced to re-assess all the assumptions that got you to that point of departure. This sort of experience simply does not show up in Cliff Notes info bits.

What though–if one wants to know what Hegel said–would be point of this experience. It doesn’t show up as something can be turned into an info bit. The point of this kind of experience of reading is the experience itself and that’s about it.

So what’s being lost exactly. I don’t know. But I think the net may have a good deal to do with the way students write these days. They have been immersed in the net for years. Information is just a click away. The experience of reading is not. That may go part way at least as an explanation for the constant teacher complaint: students cannot follow or write themselves a sustained argument.

Cell Phone Hell

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My cell phone croaked. Actually, the cell phone is not to blame. For some reason, water doesn’t show on our new granite counter top and, without realizing what I was doing, I put the phone down in the middle of a puddle–perhaps from a piece of melted ice.

So I went through cell phone abandonment anxiety. I kept opening the thing to check the time, forgetting each time that it was dead. That meant I had to use the land line; we have one of those antique wireless phones (that you used while wandering around the house). But of course, it didn’t work because it hadn’t been charged in a month of Sundays. So I charged it. Frustrating.

Then I went to the AT&T store to get a new cell and felt guilty about that because AT&T gives money to incredibly conservative causes and thinks global warming is a fantasy. But honestly I was just too tired to think about getting a politically correct phone. So, as I said, I went to the AT&T store and asked for a phone like the one I had for the last four years, the one I stupidly put in the puddle.

Of course, they did not have that phone; they have “upgraded” way past that. Still, the guy pointed to one that looked simple and cheap too, only 29.95. That’s what the sign said. But that was not the reality. It was 29.95 if I renewed our contract with them for two years, and if I mailed in a thing for a rebate. If I didn’t do these things, the phone would cost 200.

The kid pitching the phone was pleasant. But the false advertising sort of pissed me off. Like what McDonalds is doing right now, advertising you have a chance to win a million dollars everyday if you play some game they have got going. They make it seem like it’s possible to win a million dollars everyday. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think you have a chance everyday to get into the lottery for the million dollars–that is not handed out everyday–but sometime in the future.

To get the rebate, I have to cut the end off the box the phone came in, supply proof of purchase, fill out a form, and mail the whole damn thing to get a Visa debit card. Now why the hell would I want a Visa debit card. I don’t use Visa. I don’t like their commercials. I am a Master Card guy. Damn it. So not only do they make it hard to get the rebate (when the hell will I get to a post office) but they are screwing with my consumer identity.

Just a second ago my new phone started talking to me in my pocket. It said I should use voice recognition.

I told it to go to hell.

I wonder if it recognizes swear words.

The “Quarterlife Crisis”???

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I had my students meet in a computer lab so they could start poking around on the web for a possible research topic. I looked over one young woman’s shoulder, and she was reading about something called “the quarterlife crisis.” She was wondering if this quarterlife crisis thing might have something to do with the consumer society. I said I wasn’t sure since I didn’t know what the quarterlife crisis was.

So she explained it was sort of about the agony of being twentysomething. She, for example, was working and just taking a couple of classes to finish up and living in a house with three other young women, just out or soon to be out of college, and she said they didn’t know really what they were doing and where they were going. My student was paying for her own education and was trying to find a job that paid more, but in the meantime she still has to rely on her parents for rent, and really she isn’t all that happy about that.

Turns out, I guess, I did know something about this crisis, which, it appears, started getting press around 2000. I had just missed the term, but not the obvious. Ten or twenty years ago, when students dared to complain about life in college, I would go on a rant and say, just you wait, just you wait till you get in your twenties, that’s when the hell really starts. First you can’t find a job, then you do, but it’s the wrong one, so you go back to school for another degree, and by the time you get it, the market is glutted. And you get so depressed about this that your partner in life, just pray you aren’t married, gets fed up with you and leaves town to take a job elsewhere. Meanwhile, you slip up and get the herpes.

After a bit, I stopped delivering this rant. Sometimes the students–maybe it was just the mention of “the herpes”(that a teacher should mention such a thing) –looked stunned, even a bit ashen. I tried to soften the blow by saying, hey, not to worry. You have all of your twenties to figure it out. Adolescence has just been extended. If you hit thirty and don’t have the semblance of a life you could be in trouble.

That’s the fact. Along with the general extension of life goes the extension of adolescence. If you read Rousseau’s Emile (not that I recommend it) you will find that he thought adolescence (the trouble teens) lasted about six weeks. Now we have billion dollar industries catering to the malaise of the teenager; teens are now a social institution. But this is mostly a middle class thing. As Barbara Barbara Ehrenreich argues somewhere, the middle class loves to exploit its young. They are consigned to immaturity because they can’t lay their hands on adult responsibilities. Instead, they have to go college forever, while acquiring massive debt, to get into their profession of choice, and then they are required to serve extended and low paying apprenticeship before they can really get a “career” and with that the stability that might make for longer term commitments on the personal relations front.

I am not without sympathy for the firstquarter crisis; I am going through the lastquarter crisis being, as I am, a sixtiessomething. But going through the firstquarter crisis might appear something of a luxury to a working class kid who has life, whether it be adultlike or not, more or less thrust upon him or her by the force of economic circumstance. 

Retirement: Who Knows?

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I am 63, going on 64. I had thought I would retire at about 65.5. But who knows.

I received a email with the subject heading: Post-Employment Benefits Local Forum.

Just the phrasing scares me. What the hell are Post-Employment Benefits? Is that some attempt to change the definition of “retirement.” Because that’s what they will be talking about “retirement” benefits.

Apparently the UC Pension plan is in significant trouble; and I am of course concerned that these troubles may affect me significantly. That I may have to work longer than anticipated, and that even if I do, I may received reduced benefits, in terms of money and medical.

But something is afoot and it is hard to know what to think, or plan or feel.

This language appeared in the email:

The University’s long-term liability for retiree health benefits for current and future retirees is also projected to increase, from $13 billion today to nearly $26 billion by 2018. In other words, the liability is increasing at a rate of more than $1.5 billion per year. Governmental accounting regulations now require UC and other employers to include this liability in their financial statements. Such a significant liability could affect UC’s credit rating when borrowing money for campus buildings, hospitals and other projects.

If in fact the liability associated with the pension fund might inhibit
the University’s power to build buildings, support hospitals, as well
as unnamed other projects, whatever those might be, then they may do
something drastic. One does not have to look far to get some sense of
how businesses treat their employees these days, and more it more it
appears the University is a business.

Radiation Overdose and Nobody Looking

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I am flummoxed.

How did 207 people, over an 18 month period, receive, at Cedar-Sinai hospital, a CT brain perfusion scan, at 8 times the correct dose of radiation?

Apparently, there is a readout, each time a scan is done, that indicates the level of radiation. Maybe, I thought, the information panel for the CT scan is really complicated, and maybe the information on the dose is hidden in a corner. That would be stupid, but still possible. But no; one person said, “It’s right there in front of your face.”

So how did the technicians miss it; and how did the doctors who read the scans miss the level of radiation dosage printed on each scan.

Expert opinion proves not very helpful. One such expert says, “It’s pretty mystifying to me.”

Well, you bet, it’s mystifying and even a bit terrifying.

I could understand once or twice perhaps….maybe…but this happened 207 times over an 18 month period.

During this time, patients called to tell their doctors that, after the scan, their hair fell out.

Finally, somebody put two and two together–the scan and the hair falling out–and the flaw in the machine was finally noted and fixed.

One person tried to find a silver lining to the whole thing, saying that the people who received this scan were mostly old and in bad shape anyway and would probably die of something else before they died of a brain tumor produced by the excess radiation, since these are generally slow growing. I find this odd and slightly offensive reasoning. I would, were I one of the persons scanned, take small comfort in knowing I would die of something else before I died of brain tumor resulting from gross incompetence.

Jeez!

Is this another case of dependence on the machine? I don’t know and don’t want to be flip. I think this episode is worthy of some serious sociological research, and some soul searching on the part of the medical profession. 

The Passive and Dependent Consumer

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One persistent criticism of consumer society is that it makes individuals passive and dependent. Christopher Lasch says we have become overly reliant on “externally produced goods,” and, on top of that, when it comes especially to our electronic gadgets, most of the time we don’t have the faintest idea about how these “goods” work. Once upon a time, back in the 60’s, while my knowledge was far from complete, I had a general idea how a car worked. I could fix the brakes, and replace the head gasket; I could rebuild a carburetor. But now, since fuel injection, I don’t believe cars have carburetors. I believe they have computers, though I have no idea where these might be located. Additionally, I have no idea how a computer works.

I have heard that one type of car no longer has a dipstick. I mean how is one even to pretend that one knows something about a car if one cannot pop the hood and look knowingly at the dipstick.

A horrible instance of this dependence (and its attendant lack of understanding) is the recent story of the run away Lexus. This car was driven by a man in law enforcement; he knew something about driving cars. Still he was unable to stop his car when it reached 125 miles per hour. The car crashed and all four persons inside died.

When people can no longer make their car’s engine stop, something has gone hay-wire.

Apparently, this version of the Lexus has no key. Instead one has a fob. One pushes a button on the fob and then one pushes another button in the car and the car starts. I guess I still don’t understand exactly what happened. Why couldn’t the driver have pushed the button in the car to get the engine to stop. I feel helpless even thinking about it.

According to an expert, a driver of such a Lexus might have been able to stop the car if he or she had pushed the button on the fob. But if he or she repeatedly and quickly pushed the button on the fob, it wouldn’t work. One has to push the button on the fob for three seconds steadily. But in the manual for the car one was warned not to do this since one would lose power steering and power brakes.

The first car I drove did not have a manual. Now, an expert says that truly to inform car owners about the features of their cars, the manual would have to be a thousand pages long.

I have had it. I will not be able to make the next techno-step, whatever it might be. I simply refuse to read a 1000 page manual on how a car works. If I ever have to buy a new car, I will make sure it has a key that turns the car engine both on and off. I will also insist on a dipstick.

Still, perhaps the argument is all wrong. Back in the olden days, people didn’t know how a cow worked either, and they were plenty happy for the milk.

But then they had magic to explain everything.