Comment ni.ce (Score 1) 49
ni.ce!
Multitasking Considered Detrimental 371
djvaselaar sends along an article from The New Atlantis that summarizes recent research indicating that multitasking may be detrimental to work and learning. It begins, "In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: 'There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.' To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one's time; it was a mark of intelligence... E-mails pouring in, cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming--all this may become background noise, like the 'din of a foundry or factory' that [William] James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine. For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being."
Submission + - Gadets Taking Over Our Brains (reuters.com)
skotte writes: "According to a Trinity College survey released Friday, the boom in mobiles and portable devices that store reams of personal information has created a generation incapable of memorizing simple things. While perhaps not news to slashdotters, the implication is a little unsettling."
Submission + - YouTube to host Presidential Debates (brigandine.org)
skotte writes: "Wired is reporting July 23 at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, Anderson Cooper will host presidential debates in which debaters are asked 20-30 questions culled fFrom a specially designated section of YouTube, where the voting populace can post questions directly. You and I (assuming you're American, probably) can ask questions ourselves, not just a reporter in a crowd. Candidates won't know which questions they are being asked, and the video selection process will remain a complete secret. Interesting, but also the slightest bit scary."
Feed Well, Look At That: Offshoring Didn't Destroy The Tech Industry (techdirt.com)
Back during the recession years, whenever we'd write about how offshoring technology jobs wasn't the big problem people made it out to be, we'd get tons of angry comments. However, the points many of us were making were pretty straightforward. First, offshoring wasn't as cheap as people were making it out to be. The monetary costs would continue to increase as demand increased (which is exactly what happened), but more importantly, the non-monetary costs were a lot higher than people expected. Managing a team halfway around the world isn't easy, and there are lots of problems with it for certain types of projects. In fact, that's exactly what many companies discovered. At the same time, there are clearly cases where offshoring makes sense. It's classic comparative advantage economics at work, where benefits tend to accrue to both sides of the equation. People forget this and think that it's a zero sum game and that a job that goes to India is somehow "lost" forever. However, the value from well done offshoring actually opens up new opportunities and so it should come as no surprise that unemployment for techies is the lowest its been in years. This fits with other recent stories about tech wages at new highs and H1-B visas being exhausted in a single day. The simple fact is that the economy is not a zero sum game. Allowing the economy to grow by letting jobs go where they're most efficient will increase the overall pie and open up plenty of new job opportunities in other places -- which appears to be exactly what's happened. As if to underscore this, now that tech jobs are scarce in the US, those who were complaining about "lost" jobs a few years ago must think that there's less demand in India for skilled tech workers -- but the opposite is true. Tech companies there are also having trouble hiring. In other words, the sector just keeps growing, and having jobs move around doesn't mean that any jobs are permanently "lost." At some point, we'll go through this cycle again, but hopefully next time around people will recognize it for what it is, rather than passing around the blame and pushing Congress to pass protectionist laws that actually shrink the economic opportunity.
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