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There’s an interesting article in CHE right now, “Scholars Turn Their Attention to Attention,” about various research and perspectives on multitasking– or rather, the myth of multitasking.  There must be something in the air about multitasking and the bane of every non-multitasker’s existence, talking on the phone while driving.  Just yesterday, I was listening to NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” to US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood sounding a little like a crazy old man about the need to keep both hands on the wheel at all times.  I do not understand how someone can text and drive at the same time, I don’t think bus drivers or truckers ought to be talking on their cell phones (unless they have something like a head set), and I try to use my headphones when I’m driving and talking on the phone.  But doing anything while driving is pontentially dangerous, including perfectly legal (and even encouraged!) things like eating, drinking (I’ll bet spilled coffee in the lap is responsible for many more auto accidents than cell phone class), talking to others, listening to super-duper loud music, etc.

Wait, I got distracted.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, multitasking….

The CHE article is good and probably worth teaching because it covers the issue from a variety of different angles– certainly not just from the “multitasking is bad” one.  There’s some kind of information here about the “history” of research on multitasking and various experiments, but I have to say (as someone who doesn’t do this kind of research) that a lot of this seems kind of like parlor games to me.  For example:

As far back as the 1890s, experimental psychologists were testing people’s ability to direct their attention to multiple tasks. One early researcher asked her subjects to read aloud from a novel while simultaneously writing the letter A as many times as possible. Another had people sort cards of various shapes while counting aloud by threes.

Well, duh, but isn’t that more like making someone say the alphabet backwards during a sobriety test or something?  I don’t know if that necessarily tests a person’s ability to do more than one thing at once though giving most attention to a single task.  For example, as I am writing this post, I am listening to my iPhone (REM right now) and I was just interrupted to take a phone call from my wife.  That’s multitasking, but it’s not like what these people seem to mean by multitasking.

Or I guess that’s the problem here– I’m not sure there’s a very clear definition of what multitasking is.  For example, part of the argument that comes up against multitasking is that increasingly old school argument about no laptops in the classroom.  Here’s an extreme example of that:

“I’m teaching a class of first-year students,” says David E. Meyer, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. “This might well have been the very first class they walked into in their college careers. I handed out a sheet that said, ‘Thou shalt have no electronic devices in the classroom.’ … I don’t want to see students with their computers out, because you know they’re surfing the Web. I don’t want to see them taking notes. I want to see them paying attention to me.”

I don’t know who Meyers is or what his scholarship says, but that last line– I want them paying attention to me– seems pretty telling and egocentric.  And  it’s this potential lack of paying attention to me, the professor/teacher/sage on the stage/keeper o’ wisdom that has got most people like Meyers thinking like this.  Don’t get me wrong; I will sometimes ask students to close up their laptops to pay attention to something, especially if it is one of those times I have to go into a five minute lecture “about important stuff for the class” mode.  But generally, I don’t want to be the center of the class, and if my students find it easy to be distracted by Facebook (or whatever), then it’s probably a combination of me being boring or them not wanting to be in class.

One more thing:  I don’t think multitasking is even remotely a phenomenon that has come abut only with the age of the Internet.  I grew up in a multitasking household.  The television was ALWAYS on when I was a kid, and now when I am home visiting my parents, three sisters, and all the kids and in-laws (I think it’s 17 0r 18 people total), it is not at all uncommon for their to be three different televisions in different rooms but still within sight, all tuned to different channels.  My parents always read the newspaper or magazine while watching TV (or with the TV on– I’m not sure the difference was ever very clear when I was a kid), and layered over that would always be some kind of conversation.  When I go back home now, all of my adult siblings and their spouses will sit around watching TV, playing some kind of game, checking laptops or cell phones, watching children, eating snacks, and planning the next meal, all at the same time.

I mean, really:  in “real life,” who just “pays attention?”

#1:  Clearly, there was not a woman on the development team. Already all the the “feminine hygiene” jokes have been made, and I am quite confident that a woman on the team would have suggested the “problem” with the iPad name.  But beyond that, note that this intro is a bunch of white guys.

#2: I still await a device where I can store, read and make notes on PDFs. I think.  As I have commented/posted about before, I don’t read that many “trade store” books of the type you’d read with iBooks or Kindle, but a device where I could access the piles and piles of marked-up PDFs of journal articles I use to teach would be very VERY useful to me.  I don’t think this does that yet.  On the other hand, since this thing is tied to the open-source ePub platform, I suspect that there will be some way to convert PDFs relatively easily relatively soon.

#3: I think this is more of a “netbook” than it is a giant iPod. I say that because you can add a keyboard and because the keyboard that’s built in for stuff seems pretty workable, and also because I think you’d use this pretty much the same way you’d use a netbook:  some surfing, some reading, watch some movies, some email, some facebook, some games, etc., etc., all in a very portable package.  Every situation I can imagine using a netbook would be a good one for the iPad, I think.  Or maybe the iTouch is just a tiny netbook.

#4: I’m pretty sure I want one. And I am also willing to be one of the first kids on the block with one at this point, even though I am well-aware that something much better will come out in about a year.  I want to play around with it and do some more research first, but the $500 entry-level price point surprised me.  Anyway, do me a favor and talk it up as a good idea with my wife.

From a couple of different places, I came across this Mashable article, “Your Brain Can’t Handle Your Facebook Friends,” suggests that according to Dunbar’s number, the number of people you can really be “friends” with is 150.  This reminds me of article by Clive Thompson in the current issue of WIRED, “In Praise of Obscurity,” in which he talks about how when an audience becomes too large, it no longer is “social.”  He uses the example of a popular Twitter-er (???) named Maureen Evans who started tweeting recipes, became hugely popular (13,000 followers), and said the conversation between users just stopped. I’ll post a link once WIRED puts one up, probably when the next issue comes out.

First off, I blogged about this very phenomenon back in 2007 here, in talking about both Facebook and also EMUTalk.org and my struggling (dying?) “Blogs as Writerly Spaces” project.  (Perhaps I can count this post as something that will allow me to check off “worked on scholarship today” from my to do list.)  As I noted back then, since I think the readership of this blog is generally pretty small, I don’t need a lot of rules; on the other hand, with EMUTalk.org, especially when it was routinely getting 600-1000 hits a day (that’s fallen off to about half of that now), I did indeed need to set up rules.  In that sense, the Dunbar number seems to be about a threshold for organization as much as anything else.  If you have a group of people who like to play ultimate frisbee or pick-up basketball or softball every Friday night at a particular park and that group is less than 150 or so people, then you probably don’t need much in the ways of “rules.”  But if that group gets above 150, then I suspect you need to start forming a “league” with organized teams, schedules, etc.

Second, this all begs once again the definition of “friend,” something that has been a little easier to sort out with Facebook as of late thanks to its new “list” feature.  I think in the context of Facebook, people have basically over-valued and/or misinterpreted the word “friend.” In “real life,” I think of a friend as someone I either know quite well and engage in activities with on a regular basis (e.g., family friends, golfing friends, people I invite to my house for a party or something, etc.), people I know pretty well but only catch up with once in a while (e.g., many/most people at work, friends who live some distance away, etc.), or people I still know but are from a more distant past and who I haven’t necessarily even spoken with in some time.  This last category is a big one on Facebook:  we all have “friended” people from high school or college who we haven’t seen or spoken with in decades and who we aren’t especially interested in reconnecting with in “real life” again now, but who are still a kind of friend.

I have “real life” friends on Facebook, but besides “real” friends, most of my Facebook friends fall into the categories of “colleagues in my field,” people at EMU, and/or students.  No offense to any of these folks, but that y’all aren’t really my friends in the real world friend sense, right?

Third, I guess the other thing that comes up especially in the Thompson article is my concept/understanding of who I am “speaking” with when I post online, be that space on Facebook, Twitter, this or some other blog.  This may be kind of “old skool,” but I still work from the assumption that anything I post online has the potential to be read by anyone on the planet; therefore, I would never post any sort of personal thing which I would be concerned about some stranger reading.  You’re not going to get any “weird rash on my hands not going away” posts from me (btw, I have no rashes).  And if I post something like “ate tuna sandwich,” it is only because I don’t really care if anyone knows that I ate a tuna sandwich.

The tricky thing about this is trying to figure out those borders between the actually personal, the things you really would only tell to close friends, and everything else.  This is nothing new, of course; what makes it a little different now is that the sheer volume of people on networks like Facebook means that there is inevitably a learning curve for both writers and readers about the shifting definition of “Too Much Information.”  I mean, I have FB “friends” who do seem to think that posting about that mysterious rash is fair game; conversely, I also have FB “friends” who would comment on my lunch selection “Ew, TMI.”  So it goes with emerging medias, right?

BTW, today I’m going to have left-over pork loin for lunch.  If it isn’t too freezer-burned.

Thought (frustration, really) #1: Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton never had close to 60 votes in the Senate and they got stuff done.  What is wrong with the current Democratic leadership– Obama, but also the folks in Congress– that they can’t get things done?  Haven’t these people done this before?

Thought #2: I think the main reason why the Democrats lost the senate race in Massachusetts (and btw, I think they lost rather than the Republicans winning) boils down to “hubris.”  Democrat leadership in DC and in Boston simply assumed that it wouldn’t be possible for a Republican in bluer than blue Mass. to win “the Kennedy seat” in the Senate and they assumed they could have run a potted plant for the job and win.  Hubris, and the lesson should be to take every election seriously and don’t assume anything.

Thought #3: I am (or at least vote) Democrat for all sorts of different reasons, not the least of which is I identify with the progressive ideals, the empathy for my fellow citizens of the country and the world, the thoughtfulness of the approach, etc., etc.  The Democrats (at least the current version) is the “thinking person’s party.”  In contrast, the Republicans– especially in this particular instance of debating health care and the senate race in Mass.– tap into the “reptilian brain” that is in all of us and below the levels of reason.  The Republicans know that people respond unconsciously and powerfully to fear and self-interests.  And I have to say I think that the Democrats are going to have to make at least a nod to the reptile brain that is (unfortunately) a bit too forward in too many Americans if they are going to hold in 2010 and/or win in 2012.

I changed my header to this picture on a damp and melting snowy Martin Luther King day.  Needless to say, my actual view right now is different from this….

This was on Saturday:

I have been procrastinating from cleaning my office by a) teaching (well, that’s kinda my job, so that doesn’t count as procrastination), and b) looking through some piled up google reader links.  So in an effort to put off office cleaning a bit longer, here’s a bunch of links in no particular order:

• 3×3 from prof hacker. I actually end up doing this sort of thing pretty regularly on my blog.  Pretty good advice, I think.
• From The Rumpus.net, Conversations About the Internet. I got here because of conversation #5 with an Anonymous Facebook Employee, but there’s a lot of cool ones here, all things I’m really interested in.
• Star Wars Burlesque via Boing-Boing. Hope Andre sees this one….
• Harper’s Index “index.” Also via Boing-Boing.  This is super-cool:  enter in a search term and you get back Harper’s Index stuff.  It has to be in their database, of course; Michigan was, but Ypsilanti wasn’t.
• “Blindness Organizations and Arizona State University Resolve Litigation Over Kindle.”
• “Textbooks for Rent… Everywhere.” From Inside Higher Ed; among other “fun facts” from the article is that the claim is that the textbook industry does $7-9 billion in US sales annually.  Whaa???
• From jill/txt, “ethics and guidelines for personal bloggers:  advertising, privacy and honesty” is really good advice for kids and grown-ups alike.
• “Facebook blocks ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine,’ now a cease-and-desist reported,” from Boing-Boing.  Might include it in the unit in 516 on Facebook.
• Cory Doctorow:  Close Enough for Rock ‘n’ Roll, which is summed up as “New media don’t succeed because they’re like the old media, only better: they succeed because they’re worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at.”  It makes a lot of sense, actually.

Okay, cleaning will commence.  Soon….

I’ve been working all day trying to figure out what my classes for the winter term (which starts tomorrow) are going to look like.  I was going to write “working my ass off,” but let’s face it:  working in academia isn’t exactly manual labor, a point I’ll return to in a moment.  It involves a lot of sitting, a lot of thinking, a lot of reading online and on the page.  It’s fun.  Hitting the gym and eating right to reduce the size of previously mentioned ass– now that’s work.

Anyway, earlier today via Facebook and Twitter, I came across this CHE article by Thomas “not his real name” Benton, “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go.” It’s an article about why getting a PhD in “the humanities” in general is a bad idea, and it comes on the heels of a number of articles about how dreadful the job market is for academics at the MLA and, as this piece in Inside Higher Ed suggests, fields like history and economics as well.  I agree with at least two things in Benton’s article:

• A lot of potential graduate students in his and my generation received bad advice.  “Having heard rumors about unemployed Ph.D.’s, some undergraduates would ask about job prospects in academe, only to be told, “There are always jobs for good people.” If the students happened to notice the increasing numbers of well-published, highly credentialed adjuncts teaching part time with no benefits, they would be told, “Don’t worry, massive retirements are coming soon, and then there will be plenty of positions available.” The encouragement they received from mostly well-meaning but ill-informed professors was bolstered by the message in our culture that education always leads to opportunity.”  I think that’s spot-on, and it makes me glad that my entry into graduate work in the late 198os was in an MFA program– not that that was a great career move, but the stakes were a lot lower than a PhD, and it was useful in lots of other ways.
• Getting a job as a professor– particularly a humanities/literature professor– is not as easy as getting the degree, and getting the degree isn’t that easy either.  “They don’t know that you probably will have to accept living almost anywhere, and that you must also go through a six-year probationary period at the end of which you may be fired for any number of reasons and find yourself exiled from the profession. They seem to think becoming a humanities professor is a reliable prospect — a more responsible and secure choice than, say, attempting to make it as a freelance writer, or an actor, or a professional athlete — and, as a result, they don’t make any fallback plans until it is too late.”  Also very true, and I like the comparison of being a professor to these other less than “sure thing” professions.  You want a “sure thing” at a job where you can make good money, live almost anywhere, work on your schedule (within reason), and help people?  Be a nurse.

But as I skimmed and reskimmed the article during my day, while I was putting together the previously mentioned syllabi for English 328 and English 516, I got to thinking a bit more.

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The conventional wisdom is that 2009 was bad for folks, mainly because of the economy.   I know very directly two folks who were laid off as a result of the bad economy– maybe three, but the details there are a little more sketchy.  But on the micro/family level, I think 2009 was a pretty good one for us.  A few highlights from last year’s blog posts/life:

• We were all pleased to see Obama inaugurated, though we didn’t go to DC then.
• I had yet another comcast customer service fun fest.
• Annette and I got iPhones, though I still don’t have any fart apps.
• Our annual Mardi Gras party was great (and this year’s will probably be February 12 or 13)
• We had a great family trip/vacation to DC and points in Virginia, including Richmond, Harrisonburg, and points beyond.
• I am still not the editor of the CCC online.
• Will and I went to the final game of the “Final Four” in Ford Field (thanks to tickets from my parents!).
• We started a square-foot garden.
• I upgraded my office and (unexpectedly) bought a new computer– and I’m still very happy with both.
• The search committee I chaired was successful– more “work” than “life,” but the lines are fuzzy with these things.
• More gardening….
• We took a road trip to Columbus to see a movie about Jeff Smith and Bone.
• I went to C&W at UC-Davis, and posted about it here, here, here, and here.
• Even more gardening….
• Took a Krause extended family trip to Missouri followed by a stop in Chicago.
• We went to Traverse City and I taught a class that ended up being great fun for everyone involved.
• The bumper stickers came off the old Saturn and it sold on Craig’s List in 3 or 4 days.
• We went to a special screening of Where the Wild Things Are (which was awesome!)
• I might have been (or not) a bit of a jerk in the Food (W)hole.
• We made squash ravioli.
• The National Day on Writing was cool, but I’m not planning on doing that again anytime soon….
• Will was in the play The Revenge of the Space Pandas.
• Will and I went to see the puppet show The History of Ypsilanti as part of the Shadow Art Fair.
• And then we went to Avatar, and it was okay.

And that was the year that was….

I wasn’t planning on writing anything else here until after the holidaze, but Annette, Will, and I went to see Avatar this afternoon and I felt compelled to write some thoughts before going off to bed.

Before I get to the (potential) spoilers, let me say this:  I enjoyed the movie quite a bit– perhaps not as much as Will and Annette, but still quite a bit.  It’s certainly worth seeing in the theater, preferably in 3-D and in an I-Max theater.  It looked absolutely fantastic and that in and of itself made the whole thing worth it.  Though one problem I have with the 3-D is that I wear glasses, and I have to say I don’t think the glasses over the glasses thing works that great.  I’m looking forward to the not so distant future in which the glasses are not necessary. Go and see it, you’ll be glad you did.

That said, I’m not sure this was a “great” movie or this generation’s Star Wars or whatever other hyperbole you want to apply.  I think the main problem/limitation I saw in the movie is that is completely derivative of so many other movies over the last decade or so.  More on which movies– along with many MANY spoilers– after the jump.

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