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October 7, 2011

Strange But True!

Q. Can we have your undivided attention, please? Or if not that, can we have at least a fraction of it?

A. In today’s Type A or “accelerated” culture, the “rat race” is no longer merely fast-paced but “amphetamine- paced” or even “meth-paced,” with “multitaskers” everywhere, says Paul McFedries in IEEE Spectrum magazine. It really does feel like we’re doing several things at the same time when we listen to music as we check for emails or tweets and work on a multipage memo (critic Raymond Tallis’s “e-ttenuation” of work and relationships). There’s a verb for this — ”to background,” as in ringing up a client or colleague and getting only an occasional “Hmmmm” response: You’ve just been “backgrounded.”


 
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