FOOD FOOD THOUGHT: MULTITASKING IS THE OPPOSITE OF MINDFUL PRESENCE

Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (New York: Norton, 2014) ("Most of us assume . . . that automation is benign, that it raises us to higher callings but doesn't otherwise alter the way we behave or think. That's a fallacy. It's an expression of what scholars of automation have come to call the 'substitution myth.' A labor-saving device doesn't just provide a substitute for some isolated component of a job It alters the character of the entire task, including the roles, attitudes, and skills of the people who take part in it. As Raja Parasuraman explained in a 2000 journal article, 'Automation does not simply supplant human activity but rather changes it, often in ways unintended and unanticipated by the designers." Automation remakes both work and the worker." Id. at 67. "'Paying attention to the computer and to the patient requires multitasking,' observes [Beth] Lown, and multitasking 'is the opposite of mindful presence.'" Id. at 103. Also see Daniel Menaker, "Our Tools, Ourselves," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 11/9/2014.).