Donovan-Wright Associates

I’ve been gnawing on this issue for a while now, especially since as a function of (ahem) age, multi-tasking is not a ready-made skill. Far from it.

And, I was absolutely delighted to read this morning, mono-tasking may be re-emerging as an art once lost, now found.

It seems like yesterday when my daughter first starting talking about “friending” people. Huh, my feeble mind wondered? Just another one of those passing kid things, I thought and brushed it out of my consciousness.

Today it is not possible to brush those terms from consciousness. In fact, if you’re working in many professions today, it’s plastered all over the place and summarized in the term “networking.”

Now mind you, networking is no longer your mother or father’s brand of networking. It is no longer going to a few meetings a month, talking to some colleagues on the phone, taking on an office or two in an organization or two, and handling some work off line, on your own time, in a relaxed and focused fashion.

Nope, not like that anymore at all. Today it is a whirling dervish of Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Delicious, Wordpress, Blogger, Twitter, text messaging, email, and myriad other digitally-based networking and communication options. Not the least of it is is that today’s super-networkers are doing five or six things at one time. They are involved with a list of groups too long to fit on a single screen. They are constantly in your email, Twitter, etc., their smiling faces making you wonder when they get any “real” work done.

I know of one woman whose face is ALWAYS in mine, digitally of course, whose always leading some seminar or other, who is a member of countless groups and organizations, and an office in just about as many. Oh, and did I mention that she has her own business and is an ordained minister? Phew. She makes me tired. She makes me tired in several ways. First is simply the act of reading and thinking about all she does. Second is that her constant presence is just plain tiresome. Can there be such a thing as overdoing your brand in a digital milieu?

I do believe so. I once asked her how she gets any work done. She didn’t like the question. She didn’t answer. What does that mean?

My son and I were talking about this issue last night, and I proffered that we wise ones are perhaps the last of generations that deal in depth. What I mean is, we have been trained to take an issue, think about it, study it, and delve into it in a deep and thorough way. I think our approach tends to offer results that are more complete, and dare I say, of a higher quality? I mean, if you’re focusing on just one thing instead of multitasking, there has to be a difference in results!

As for the younger set (my 25 year old son does not consider himself a member of this group), the approach is more of a skimming off the top, never delving too deep, and striving to get “it” (whatever that might be) done as quickly as possible.

To conclude: there is obviously a major difference in styles here, and I, for one, have concluded that to try and adopt the multi-tasking, fast-paced style of the digital networking set is simply not going to work for me. In fact, it is a formula for disaster. So stuff it, I say.

The cool thing is, it seems like other people are saying the same thing.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner
The University of Chicago Press

It took me a few moons to do so, but I finally finished Fred Turner’s really captivating From Counterculture to Cyberculture this past weekend and my mind will remain reeling from his unusual ideas for some time to come.

Let me see if I can do justice to its premise. Basically, Turner sets about to prove the point that the evolution of culture as it is today is directly correlated to the protest, hippie, and commune movements of the 1960’s, specifically as orchestrated by influential entrepreneurs from San Francisco area, led by Stewart Brand. .

He talks about the bureaucracy of organizations in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and of the resultant authoritarian rule and subsequent corruption. He talks about the age of the Whole Earth Catalog, the hippies, and communes as a counter-culture response to conservatively driven bureaucracies. He makes a tight parallel between The Whole Earth catalog and its emphasis on functionality to the world of the Internet and the web. He talks about how the Internet harbors groups and forums where people of like minds can gather, as in the days of communes and protest marches.

From the back of the book:

“Fred Turner details the previously untold story of a highly influential group of Bay Area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the Whole Earth Catalog, the computer-conferencing system WELL, and, ultimately, Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers. Turner’s fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.”

Although bogged down by the language for academics, the book is still worth reading, albeit at a slow pace, to instigate new ways of looking at and thinking about our present day Cyberculture as well as, ourselves.