There has been a fair amount of discussion – if not debate – over a recent study by Stanford University researchers examining the effectiveness of multitasking. Essentially, the study found that the more people tried to perform multiple tasks simultaneously, the worse they did performing any of those tasks. While some dyed-in-the-wool multitaskers have understandably wanted to challenge these findings, it’s hard to ignore the scientific evidence, if not our own real-world experiences.

As the lead researcher of the Stanford study points out, psychologists have already demonstrated that it’s physically impossible for humans to multitask.  On the surface, this makes sense since, unlike computers, we have only one processor – our brain.  Of course, there’s something more tangible that we can all relate to that further establishes this fact. Click here to continue reading »”Unravelling The Myths of Multitasking and Time Management – Part 1″

An online conversation with a friend of mine this week had me thinking about social networking sites and the relationships they foster.  I was told about a mutual friend who was experiencing some hard knocks in his personal life.  While he shared news of his troubled state with the thousands of people who are connected to him on one of these social networking sites, less than a handful of them took the time to respond to him with words of encouragement or support.  Although this casts an unflattering light on social networking sites, I can’t help but feel that it reveals certain truths about social media in general.

By its nature, social media sites are designed to revolve around us.  We share the ideas, stories and information that we want to share.  We make connections with people on these networks who we have an interest in connecting with.  Where the differences arise is whether Click here to continue reading »”Is Social Media Making Us Uncaring?”

(Twitter icon bird set, created by Mirjami Manninen, can be downloaded here)

It’s been about a month now that I’ve been using the Twitter social-networking platform and I have to admit, it’s been an interesting study of how human communication is evolving through our interaction and usage of new software communication platforms. Now to be truthful, I’ve been wary of starting up a Twitter account because like anyone else viewing it from the outside, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Indeed, the most common question posed when someone hears you’re “on Twitter” is what exactly is Twitter. The most common explanations are that Twitter is a “micro-blogging platform” due to its restricting entries to no more than 140 characters or that’s it’s just another social networking outlet to stay in touch with a group of friends/acquaintances. Although my experience with Twitter is still new and thus, rather limited, I think this other definition sums up Twitter best – Twitter is whatever you make it out to be. Confused enough? Well, let me share my own experience with this platform to shed some light on this.

Now as I mentioned above, I wasn’t very keen on joining Twitter simply because the few times I perused the site, I was either confused in trying to figure out how to follow the various conversation streams going on over multiple accounts or being rather put-off with the numerous entries by various users sharing details of what they were eating for lunch or dinner (I still can’t comprehend why anyone would think that others are so interested in hearing what you’re eating. I wonder how many of them would bother to pick the phone and call a friend to tell them “Hey, guess what? I decided to have the roast beef au jus with stir-fried zucchini and a glass of Merlot. Just thought you’d be interested”). So, there didn’t seem to be anything of note within Twitter that would spur my interest in either joining or participating in such a social networking site. That is, until I realized that Click here to continue reading »”Twitter and Me – My Trip ‘Round The Twitterverse”

In my previous entry, I wrote about the ongoing tactic used by social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to remove pictures of mothers breastfeeding their children as they deemed them to be “offensive” and/or “pornographic” in nature. Indeed, the blogosphere has been ablaze with posts either expressing outrage at this continued discrimination against women or worse, people trying to rationalize that images of breastfeeding mothers would be as appropriate as seeing pictures of people going to the bathroom as both are ‘natural acts’ (how’s that for a mature, rational thought process – trying to connect providing sustenance to a baby with the process of excretion). Now I’ve already made my position on this clear in my last post, but as I inferred near the end of that entry, there is another related issue arising from this that bears some examination for further discussion and debate. So what I want to discuss here is the framework under which this controversy is occurring and that is how should we define the balance between how end users of a social-networking site communicate and share and the rights/responsibilities of the owners/managers of these online community websites. Click here to continue reading »”Social-Networking Sites MySpace and Facebook – It’s Time For Some Change”