http://drewskwarcan.com/blog/microsoft-announces-new-human-os-for-your-brain/ I would say my greatest strength is probably data entry. Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:34:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 http://drewskwarcan.com/blog/microsoft-announces-new-human-os-for-your-brain/comment-page-1/#comment-159 Drew Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:18:18 +0000 http://drewskwarcan.com/?p=75#comment-159 Pat, thanks for the excellent comment. You make several good points. I agree that multitasking is automatic when we're performing well-trained tasks. Sometimes when driving I catch myself and realize just how little attention I'm paying. Then I get freaked out when I realize how casual I am about driving a ton of metal at 70 mph. But the brain is a wonderful thing isn't it? And multitasking is the brains way of forcing us to expand to it's full potential. It can't be contained for long because it starts to wander and get creative. Thanks for taking a moment to think about... well, how we think! Pat, thanks for the excellent comment. You make several good points. I agree that multitasking is automatic when we’re performing well-trained tasks. Sometimes when driving I catch myself and realize just how little attention I’m paying. Then I get freaked out when I realize how casual I am about driving a ton of metal at 70 mph. But the brain is a wonderful thing isn’t it? And multitasking is the brains way of forcing us to expand to it’s full potential. It can’t be contained for long because it starts to wander and get creative. Thanks for taking a moment to think about… well, how we think!

]]> http://drewskwarcan.com/blog/microsoft-announces-new-human-os-for-your-brain/comment-page-1/#comment-140 Pat Parslow Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:47:05 +0000 http://drewskwarcan.com/?p=75#comment-140 It seems to me that the more 'trained' we are to perform a task the easier it is to do it subconsciously. Driving becomes subconscious, with our conscious mind brought back in to play when something is amiss (we hope!). Small talk appears to be able to take place without conscious input. Indeed, talking about even quite technical things, as long as they have been rehearsed, becomes second nature, and the pattern matching systems in your head seem to spot when something doesn't fit the auto-pilots expectations and brings your attention to bear. It isn't quite the same as being conscious of all the things at once, but it does seem to allow for quite impressive levels of 'multi-tasking'. We may only be conscious of one thing at a time (but perhaps fool ourselves with fast time slicing) - but it seems we are able to be subconsciously aware of a lot of things, and able to spot possible threats (in terms of expectation breakers) to attract our attention. This is not really very surprising - we have a lot of neurons at work, and it makes sense for parallel processing to handle different inputs (semi) independently. To be honest, I don't think I was particularly aware of writing this comment... I think and talk about this stuff a lot, and it has become second nature - but it is always fun when someone challenges it and causes 'me' to 'think' :-) It seems to me that the more ‘trained’ we are to perform a task the easier it is to do it subconsciously. Driving becomes subconscious, with our conscious mind brought back in to play when something is amiss (we hope!). Small talk appears to be able to take place without conscious input. Indeed, talking about even quite technical things, as long as they have been rehearsed, becomes second nature, and the pattern matching systems in your head seem to spot when something doesn’t fit the auto-pilots expectations and brings your attention to bear.
It isn’t quite the same as being conscious of all the things at once, but it does seem to allow for quite impressive levels of ‘multi-tasking’. We may only be conscious of one thing at a time (but perhaps fool ourselves with fast time slicing) – but it seems we are able to be subconsciously aware of a lot of things, and able to spot possible threats (in terms of expectation breakers) to attract our attention.
This is not really very surprising – we have a lot of neurons at work, and it makes sense for parallel processing to handle different inputs (semi) independently.
To be honest, I don’t think I was particularly aware of writing this comment… I think and talk about this stuff a lot, and it has become second nature – but it is always fun when someone challenges it and causes ‘me’ to ‘think’

]]>