[Air-l] multitasking

[Bob Rehak]

On Sun, October 15, 2006 13:16, Charlie Balch wrote:

> I believe the perspective of humans having multiple "processes" is
> appropriate. This is in conflict with your suggestion of "sensory array
> shifts need attention." While I have not reviewed the literature, my
> perception is that we respond to multiple sensory channels with various
> degrees of attention. The extent to which these sensory channels overlap
> creates conflict. Very different tasks will not be in conflict.
>
> Much like interrupts in computer operating systems, the various areas that
> we perceive are brought to our attention when they become important. What
> qualifies as "important" is very individual. For instance, I'm more
> productive with music in the background, I think that this is because the
> area of me that expects music does not send out "Need Music" distracters
> and
> that other parts of me are not distracted by processing the appreciation
> of
> the background music.

A great discussion! Quite apart from the issue at hand (the various
meanings & manifestations of multitasking), I'm struck by the way in which
it's become common to describe human cognitive processes using the
language of computer operations (e.g. Charlie's "'Need Music'
distracters"). Though I guess this really *is* at the heart of the issue:
we assume an equivalence -- or at least a translatability -- between
multitasking as a function of microprocessors and as a function of
consciousness. This equation carries a good deal of connotative baggage
with it, chief being: which term (mind/processor) gets privileged as the
dominant of the metaphor? From Charlie's comments above, I'd say it's
processor over mind; that is, mind is being described in terms of
computing architecture, rather than vice versa.

I don't say any of this critically. I'm foursquare for metaphorizing. But
I think it's important to remember that a metaphor *is* in play, and such
"figures of thought" have a way of naturalizing themselves, carrying the
conversation toward what seem like reasonable conclusions but which may
diverge from the facts (of consciousness, computing, or both).

Debates over the appropriatness/applicability of mind/computer comparisons
raged during the first way of AI research in the 1950s, and has been taken
up by writers such as Jonn Searle and Daniel C. Dennett (the latter of
whom does claim that mental activity is a series of calculations). Of
course, there are contrary positions --
http://www.kschroeder.com/blog/1120137696/index_html -- but for me, one
problem with computational models of mind is that their overweening
assumption of rationality, the implication that our heads do what they do
with the sober purposefulness of Microsoft Office. It's reassuring to
imagine ourselves multitasking in the same way our applications do; but
that reassuring quality acts as an ideological lure, coaxing our attention
(all too irrationally!) away from the alternative possibility that as
subjects-of-consciousness we are divided, incomplete, distracted for
reasons beyond our control.

So yes, I'm talking about psychoanalysis, the unconscious, the alienated
subject. The concepts are out of fashion, largely because of the hegemony
of AI, neurology, and cognitive science, fields linked by their allegience
to the mind-as-computer model. In defense of psychoanalysis, all I can say
is that my own multitasking is a fitful and unpredictable affair, its
messiness itself displaying striking patterns. How often have I been
trying to hold two lines of thought simultaneously while a third,
uninvited thought obsessively intervenes? Or unable to retrieve a name
from my inner "database," though it's on the tip of my tongue and I
*should* remember it? Or uttering an incorrect but symptomatically related
term, i.e. a Freudian slip, instead of what I intended to say?

The psychopathology of everyday life returns as an entropic degradation in
the integrity of mental data, interfering with its checksums, corrupting
its archives, producing lossy compression. At these times I feel at the
whim of my mental processes rather than at their helm.

Regards,

-- 
Bob Rehak
Visiting Assistant Professor
Film and Media Studies
Swarthmore College

Associate Editor
Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal
http://anm.sagepub.com/