Free Republic

If you are sending a text, watching the TV or listening to the radio, you may want to stop and give this your full attention. Multi-tasking shrinks the brain, research suggests. A study found that men and women who frequently used several types of technology at the same time had less grey matter in a key part of the brain....

... Does the mere possibility that a phone call or e-mail will soon arrive drain your brain power? And does distraction matter — do interruptions make us dumber? Quite a bit, according to new research by Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab. There’s a lot of debate among brain researchers about the impact of gadgets on our brains. Most discussion has focused on the deleterious effect of multitasking. Early results show what most of us know implicitly: if you do two things at once, both efforts suffer. In fact, multitasking is a misnomer. In most situations, the person juggling e-mail,...

The next time someone starts talking to you about "Multitasking" ask them to watch this and THEN get back to you.

Britons are increasingly overlapping their media habits - tapping out e-mails while watching TV, reading a paper while answering texts from friends. But, asks Hugh Wilson, does media multi-tasking mean instead of doing a few things well, we are just doing more things badly?I was watching a documentary the other day about an educational issue that - as the father of a child about to start his first year at school - held more than a passing interest. At the same time, I was actively participating in a three-way text message conversation about the coming weekend. It's fair to say...

SAN FRANCISCO — When one of the most important e-mail messages of his life landed in his in-box a few years ago, Kord Campbell overlooked it. Not just for a day or two, but 12 days. He finally saw it while sifting through old messages: a big company wanted to buy his Internet start-up. “I stood up from my desk and said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,’ ” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s kind of hard to miss an e-mail like that, but I did.” The message had slipped by him amid an electronic flood: two computer screens...

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a hater. This world is full of things I HATE! I hate SUVs. I hate cell phones. I hate Blackberrys! Not the sweet and juicy kind that grow on vines. No, I'm referring to the ubiquitous annoying kind that are attached to the hands of self-important biz nerds. These are people SO critical to the success of their respective enterprises they can't be out of communication range for even one second. Curiously, this phenomenon is most evident among the job descriptions whose decisions are the least vital and the most subjective. Are you listening all...

Am I the only person who still prefers doing things one at a time? My fellow New Yorkers have raised multitasking to an art form. People talk on their cellphones while jogging, do their homework on the subway, listen to books on tape while walking, put on makeup in the back seat of the taxicab and - always, everywhere, constantly - talk on their cellphones while they're busy doing something else. This isn't how things were meant to be. Our brains are not built to work this way, no matter how many times teenagers insist that they're paying full attention...

Woman Sentenced for High-Speed Nursing RAVENNA, Ohio - A woman who nursed her infant while driving 65 mph on the Ohio Turnpike was sentenced to three months of house arrest for violating child-restraint laws. Catherine Nicole Donkers, 29, was also fined $300 Thursday. The judge delayed the sentence for one month so she can pursue her appeal. Donkers was found guilty in August of three traffic-related charges. She was found innocent of child endangering. Donkers said her husband ordered her by cell phone to breast-feed their 7-month-old daughter to save time while she drove on the turnpike May 8. Police...

<p>My name is Sam, and I'm a multi-tasking addict.</p> <p>I hit rock bottom last week, sitting at the computer in the dining room and twisting my neck hard to the right to monitor a sporting event on television in the living room. What I got, other than a stiff neck, was impaired comprehension of both activities.</p>