"Oh, I'm very good at multi-tasking!"

[Metryq]

Don't confuse "round robin" juggling of tasks with actual multi-tasking. Again, humans do not multi-task, although sometimes concurrent tasks may be juggled. Given the potentially catastrophic consequences, one should not juggle while driving.

(Or shave, or read the newspaper, or watch movies, or any number of other boneheaded distractions I routinely see people doing. Even when "only" driving, many people do it poorly. I think marked lane violations are more common than speeding, especially around curves.)

[Vertigo]

Not entirely true Metryq. Our brain multi-tasks pretty much all the time running our body. Subconscious maybe, but still very much our brain running several tasks at once. As for conscious or active multitasking we are not good at it certainly and I agree there is some dispute as to whether or not we can do it. I have seen a very simple and convincing demonstration/experiment involving interpreting a reflected mirror image whilst controlling your hand. However, I'm no psychologist so can only comment from a layman's perspective.

[j. d. worthington]

I think part of the problem here is the loose definition of "multi-tasking". It is true that, for instance, one who is used to doing so, can cook, take care of a baby, and talk on the telephone or watch television, etc., all at once, though usually with a diminution of efficiency in one or more of those tasks. In part that is because these are all tasks which come to have a fair degree of "automatic pilot" aspect to them, once learned, which allows the brain to focus specifically on any one of those tasks only when something out of the ordinary occurs: the water starts to boil, the baby starts to cry or picks up something we (even in a largely distracted state) recognizes as hazardous, etc.

On the other hand, genuine "multi-tasking", which requires cognitive skills, assessment of factors, formulation of action, and conscious execution, is largely unattainable because with so much of this, the same areas of the brain are going to be required to be paying attention to and appropriately responding to several types of conflicting information simultaneously. The brain simply isn't evolved to handle that sort of thing; again, in part because it was evolved to insure our responding immediately and with appropriate action to danger in order to survive and propagate... without which, those mechanisms would not be passed on. And, from my understanding of what we've found neurologically, this is a very basic part of the structure of the brain itself, something which has been with us since long before we were human. It is something we share with most mammals, as well as a host of other types of animals, in varying degrees.

There may come a time when we are able to function on this sort of level, but (barring deliberate mucking about with such fundamental factors of brain structure genetically), it is likely to require millions of years and an immeasurably stronger survival pressure than our piddling technological dependencies can bring to bear in order to come about... and if it does, the very fact that it will require such major changes makes the question of whether we would then even be what we would recognize as "human" a rather major point....

[hopewrites]

while I agree with your data, I disagree with the conclusions you have drawn from it. The reason I conjecture that we are more able to mulch-task than even one or two generations before us is that when I look at all the demands on a persons attention 50 years ago I find them considerably less than the demands we chose to place on our attention now. Visual stimuli were different, noise levels were lower and of different frequencies, and communication was not as globally instantaneous. The skills and values taught in schools were different, people memorized data that is now databased, and upcoming generations are now taught how to access the databases rather than self-store them inside their heads.
To me these things spell out a change in the way humans cognitively process the world around them. An evolution of the mind. On this path I can see viable multi-tasking within the next hundred (or hundreds) of years rather than the million you propose.
The impetus to change and grow always comes from within. Mear survival methods are influanced from pressures without and I will agree that they do take millions of years. Take for example entertainment, how much more quickly does one adapt to a form of entertainment that one chooses over a form one does not chose? Games I try to play just because someone pressures me into playing I never learn all the rules to and give up the moment the pressure is off. However, if there is a game I wish to play I learn the rules with rapidity, including all the nuances of verious techniques, and keep up with it until I chose to be done with it.
Because we as human beings are choosing to 'over stimulate' ourselves, we are pushing our adaptability to cope with more and more stimuli thus bringing about an evolution of the mind. Just as body builders constantly push the bounds of what is physically possible, each successive generation is pushing the bounds of what is mentally possible.

[j. d. worthington]

Once again, though, the evidence is that this is not working that way; that when the same (or closely related) brain functions are required for multiple tasks simultaneously, it causes serious diminution in performance on all (or nearly all). Again, where different portions of the brain are affected, the diminution can be lessened, sometimes quite radically so. This is simply because of the way the brain itself functions -- the very nature of its structure. It isn't simply a matter of adaptation, but rather of practically going "back to the drawing board" and getting at the very basics of brain structure and resultant functioning.

Might we find some way around that? That is a possibility, yes; but it is not going to be something we do out of interest, or in a brief span of time, without altering the very core of how a brain develops and works. The example you provide goes toward the role interest (and, possibly, aptitude) plays in learning a task, but it has nothing to do with how capable the brain is of expanding its basic functions; rather, it is acting within very well-understood parameters which have been studied for a very long time.

[hopewrites]

Agreed. But I view the epidemic of ADD that is reported to be increasing rapidly among younger and successive generations not as a disease but an adaptation and evolution of the way the brain functions.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by hopewrites

Agreed. But I view the epidemic of ADD that is reported to be increasing rapidly among younger and successive generations not as a disease but an adaptation and evolution of the way the brain functions.

Now, that's an interesting interpretation. I, myself, don't see it as a "disease", nor even a disfunction, but as a healthy normal reaction to exposure to too much simultaneous information, far beyond what the brain is structured to accommodate. In other words, to me, this is simply another example of how our technological abilities have outstripped our basic physical (and therefore mental, emotional, and moral) nature.

I do think that we will find methods of coping with this and adapting to it to a sustainable level, but the cost is going to be high, and perpetual for a very, very long time....

[hopewrites]

I find that for myself and for many of the others like me the "suffering" of ADD is more in the social unacceptance of our normality than in the normality itself.
Comparing my father's school experience to mine and my son's I can track the social evolution that makes it easier for deslexics to learn, not because they way we think and learn changed but because the way others think of us and accept the way our brains work changed. I am glad that my son will have a positive learning environment because understanding and acceptance have both increased. Just as my father was glad my learning difference would be worked with rather than beat out.

To bring this example back to topic, I hope that the social advancements we have made in understanding and accepting (rather than treating) other learning differences will help more of the stimuli driven changes in human makeup to be embraced and utilized.

[David Evil Overlord]

Originally Posted by hopewrites

The skills and values taught in schools were different, people memorized data that is now databased, and upcoming generations are now taught how to access the databases rather than self-store them inside their heads.

And according to newspapers here, there are now (prototype) glasses that you can use to surf the internet (mutli-tasking mayhem while driving, anyone?), and (prototype) flexible plastic computers the thickness of a human hair, that can be worn like jewellery or clothing.

Easier to surf the databases. Less need to know anything.

The only thing we'll need to memorise is don't wear your Google Goggles in the shower.

[Ursa major]

I recall a music teacher - she was teaching general music classes, not helping us learn how to play an instrument - telling us all that it was more important to know how to access information, and to know where it might be found, than remembering it all.

This was in 1973, at the very latest.

[Vertigo]

I remember being annoyed about that at university doing electronics. I got so frustrated by the fact that we had to remember loads of formulae and were not allowed reference books in the exams. Now it seems to me that at the university level it should be all about knowning how to do things not remembering formulae that in real life you would just look up when needed. </rant>