Connectedness

An interesting thought, from the March 14th, 2008 Chronicle Review (Dwelling in Possibilities):

One day I tried an experiment in a class I was teaching on English and American Romanticism. We had been studying Thoreau and talking about his reflections (sour) on the uses of technology for communication. ("We are in great haste," he famously said, "to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.") I asked the group, "How many places were you simultaneously yesterday — at the most?" Suppose you were chatting on your cellphone, partially watching a movie in one corner of the computer screen, instant messaging with three people (a modest number), and glancing occasionally at the text for some other course than ours — grazing, maybe, in Samuelson's Economics rather than diving deep into Thoreau's "Economy" — and then, also, tossing the occasional word to your roommate? Well, that would be seven, seven places at once. Some students — with a little high-spirited hyperbole thrown in, no doubt — got into double digits. Of course it wouldn't take the Dalai Lama or Thoreau to assure them that anyone who is in seven places at once is not anywhere in particular — not present, not here now. Be everywhere now — that's what the current technology invites, and that's what my students aspire to do.

I see a lot of the kids in this. I also see a lot of myself, too.

Consider the classroom, and the usual scene of a child spending time on a worksheet of some sort. That child is there (1) working on the sheet; that child is usually also interested in the work of their neighbor (2), and is guaranteed an occasional visit from the teacher (3) who may ask the student to go into the hallway to read with an adult (4) before we leave the classroom to go to music (5). Consider, too, the typecast we have of the high-striving high school student, who participates in a sport, the band, drama, knowledge bowl, ASB, FBLA, holds down a job, and keeps family commitments as well (A Class Apart by Alex Klein is full of examples of this sort of kid).

But upon thinking about it, this is me, too. I leave my Groupwise email box open all day, and I probably check it a couple of times an hour, whenever I happen to walk by my desk, to see what's new. I keep my classroom door open 90% of the time, and it's quite common for another teacher to walk in to ask a question or get advice. The telephone rings; the intercom pleads. Very rarely am I ever just teaching.

Even at home, the rule applies. I'll be here at the computer blogging, attending to my daughter, having a conversation, and trying to pay some modicum of attention to the television, all at the same time. It's rare for me to not multi-task; even watching TV, I usually have a magazine in my lap.

Digg had a recent article on multi-tasking here that was another thoughtful look at the effect of trying to live in multiple realities at once; a related bit of insight can be found at Zen Habits, here.

Is multi-tasking a problem? Is it your problem? How do you overcome it?