mul·ti·task·ing
n. "the concurrent or interleaved execution of two or more jobs by a single CPU"
I saw a women flossing her teeth and steering with her elbows today on the freeway. she was probably going about 70. her car was like a big blue crayon in the hands of an invisible 5-year-old trying their hardest to stay in the lines and managing some of the time. I passed her completely dumbfounded by this brazen act. she was endangering not only her own life but the lives of countless others around her. was it a bit of apple skin? or a fiber of pulled pork? what was it that she couldn't wait to get out? what fragment of her lunch had driven her to this? really, she couldn't have taken 5 minutes to pull off the freeway to complete this urgent task? I found myself wondering, at what point do we stop and say, I have taken multitasking too far? the word "multitasking" itself was created in 1966 to describe what a computer does. we are not computers, nor should we strive to be. computers cannot replace us. maybe computers can knit sweaters faster, but they can't hug us and make us feel safe. multitasking has become a tag line that describes a valuable human being. but to me, it doesn't matter so much how many things you can do at once as much as what it is you're doing.
1 comment:
this woman is amazing! i have a hard enough time trying to get the window down in time for a much needed cat-call or find an empty cup holder to stash my fifth double quarter pounder wrapper. americans have taken multi-tasking to the edge and i think it rules. we're totally becoming computers too. emotion is weakness. dreams are meaningless fodder for sheepish infidels incapable of seeing the bigger picture. we need more everything now! only a terrorist thinks we do things too much, too often.
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