Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Can we Multitask?

It seems that everyone now is trying to get as much then as they can it as little time as possible. Unlike computers though our brains can only do one thing at a time and just switches tasks back and forth quickly to simulate multitasking. Its all about saving time to the point that people do emails while they are driving and this leads us to having laws passed in certain areas that make it illegal to do anything but drive. No more eating, no more talking on the phone, no more anything but your two hands on the wheel and your eyes glued to the road.

People are convinced that you can do everything at once without it complicating more important things. College students are always trying to be on Facebook and with laptops and smart phones it has become so easy to do this while sitting in class. I have caught myself doing it all the time. I plan just to check a quick thing on the internet and that leads to something else which leads to something else. When I look up to see what is going on in the lecture I am completely lost and not sure what all I missed.

While humans can't multitask like a computer can, we have our ways to simulate it and work on multiple things at a time save time in our day and fit as much in as possible.

2 comments:

  1. Good points! I catch myself doing the same thing in class too. One thing leads to another, perfectly said. Some people have better multitasking skills than others, we will never compare to what a computer can do.

    Here is an article that talks about Human mulititasking and some challenges it raises.

    Can our brain function as well as a computer?
    http://news.softpedia.com/news/Human-Multitasking-Hype-Proved-Wrong-94874.shtml

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  2. I wouldn't say humans can't multi-task. The human brain is very good at parallel processing. It is complex, unpracticed tasks that require more brain resources. Humans can in fact multi-task, however, performance on individual tasks will decrease with increased number of tasks.

    I do agree with the Google being a huge time saver. If I can get to information in less time than a book, it only benefits my intelligence :)

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