Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Multi-Tasking is an Illusion (for humans)

As evidenced by this posting in conjunction with the one prior. After reading the last of these two posts, none of you fuckers will remember or care about the other one. Through extensive personal research, i have learned that humans are unable (and often also unwilling) to respond to more than one thought or idea at a time. If i have multiple points to share, there is no especially effective means to communicate them simultaneously. Forget conversation. That's good times, for certain. Especially with a li'l Glen Livet on hand. But the conversation pattern is usually one idea that becomes splayed and takes on a different life and form. Which is great. Except for effectively communicating multiple points. Try putting multiple ideas in one email. See how many of these ideas people truly pay attention to or consider. In the biz world, people love bullet points. But that usually only gives short shrift to both the ideas in the list as well as their response. The best way i have found so far to deal with this solution is single posts/emails, time, and patience. You might not think this is a major problem, but consider for a second that we have the ability as humans to create many different ideas, often at basically the same time, yet don't have the means to share them in an effective manner. Imagine how helpful that would be in meetings, or war situations. Wouldn't it be nice if we had multiple mouths and brains with which to carry on simultaneous conversations? Or a massive mental download? I can think of only one champ who can work on this level. My friend ApeRobot. But it's a double–edged sword because he always gest so mad at me when I want my raw, bloody meat, even at the expense of intellectual enlightenment. Wolff is as Wolff does. The score after one event (multi-tasking):

Robots/Computers: 1, Humans: 0, Wolff: 0

-IW