Something I see all the time is young mothers nursing their children, so they’re holding their child’s face like this and their cell phone is here. So they’re on the, you know multitasking is an evil word I think because it implies that there’s something good about multitasking when it fact to me it’s a very definition of lack of pleasure. Things that give you pleasure are things that allow you to single mindedly focus on something.
Writers talk about when you’re writing you’re in the flow which means that the world around you evaporates and it’s just and your characters and that’s, that’s when writing is pleasurable. Or when you’re having a great meal and you’re not thinking about other things, you’re thinking I can’t believe how this melted cheese sandwich tastes, it’s the most delicious thing. So pleasure for me is defined by single mindedness and multitasking is by definition annoying to me.
So if you’re, the pleasure of nursing a baby, you know babies vision is constructed so that it’s 18 inches you know for the first four months they see best at 18 inches. That’s because that’s the difference between their face and their mother’s eyes. So if they’re looking in their mother’s eyes and she’s looking over there at the screen, you kind of wonder you know. I think they’ll probably grow up fine but maybe the mother isn’t so fine.
You know it’s, the pleasure of doing anything and focusing on the thing that you’re doing, being in the moment, is what makes it worthwhile. So I think the problem, one of the problems with having a ubiquitous device in your hand is you’re always multitasking. You’re never, if you take the train, nobody is looking out the window, they’re on, they’re on devices. Meanwhile the world, there’s a pretty interesting thing going on around you.
Nobody is present when you go visit any site in the world, everybody’s taking pictures of it and you wonder have you stopped to look at it or just feel it for a moment? So somehow in society we’re going to have to find a balance between being here and now and present and experiencing pleasure and being productive, we’re all under the gun to be so productive, we have to be answering our emails at 11 o’clock at night when maybe you’d want to sit outside and look at the stars or go to sleep.
