| |
|
Monday, 17 October 2005
|
|
Cory Doctorow:
Clive Thompson's written an excellent
piece for the NYT about life-hackers, academic and amateur, who
approach the ever-increasing craziness of high-tech life and its many
interruptions as an engineering problem to be solved:
On the bigger screen, people completed the tasks at least
10 percent more quickly - and some as much as 44 percent more quickly.
They were also more likely to remember the seven-digit number, which
showed that the multitasking was clearly less taxing on their brains.
Some of the volunteers were so enthralled with the huge screen that
they begged to take it home. In two decades of research, Czerwinski had
never seen a single tweak to a computer system so significantly improve
a user's productivity. The clearer your screen, she found, the calmer
your mind. So her group began devising tools that maximized screen
space by grouping documents and programs together - making it possible
to easily spy them out of the corner of your eye, ensuring that you
would never forget them in the fog of your interruptions. Another
experiment created a tiny round window that floats on one side of the
screen; moving dots represent information you need to monitor, like the
size of your in-box or an approaching meeting. It looks precisely like
the radar screen in a military cockpit.
In late 2003, the technology writer Danny O'Brien decided he was
fed up with not getting enough done at work. So he sat down and made a
list of 70 of the most "sickeningly overprolific" people he knew, most
of whom were software engineers of one kind or another. O'Brien wrote a
questionnaire asking them to explain how, precisely, they managed such
awesome output. Over the next few weeks they e-mailed their replies,
and one night O'Brien sat down at his dining-room table to look for
clues. He was hoping that the self-described geeks all shared some
common tricks.
Fantastic article! You may have to register with the New York Times to read it. Don't worry; it's free, and they don't bug you.
Link [Boing Boing]
11:00:18 PM 
|
|
|
Image copyright Time; all rights reserved.
The other day, as I was musing idly, one foot in the remainder bin, the other on a banana peel, Time
came calling, out of the blue. They were interested to know if I'd be
willing to play a walk-on role as fringe futurist in their "What's
Next" issue (October 24, 2005, on newsstands now). A few days later, I
found myself in the standard-issue characterless conference room,
playing brain pong with Tim O'Reilly, Malcolm Gladwell, Clay Shirky,
David Brooks, Esther Dyson, and Moby. (What were they thinking?!?) I have next to nothing in common with them, but it was fun nonetheless, a real thought-rattling kick in the head. Transcript here. [Shovelware]
10:48:40 PM
|
|
|
|
© Copyright 2005 Peter Nixon.
Last update: 1/11/05; 10:06:54 PM.
|
|
|
