2008 November | Medical Health

Multi-tasking, Texting, and the Service Economy

November 6th, 2008

We hear all this hype on TV about how the younger generations are now experts at multi-tasking and texting and how video games help our children grow up to be surgeons. But who wants a surgeon who multi-tasks and texts? I mean neither multi-tasking nor texting contribute to a surgeon’s operating-room skills. Both multi-tasking and texting interfere with our ability to concentrate at the task at hand; multi-tasking and texting help us waste our time.

Multi-tasking and texting are products of our service economy; as skills they benefit secretaries, telemarketers, and corporate middle managers. Conversely, specialists (scientists, astronauts, mechanics, doctors, nurses, drivers, engineers, etc.) need to concentrate, not multi-task. Writers need to write, not text.

When the TV pundits and news anchors praise multi-tasking and texting and the younger generation’s ability to simultaneously do homework, watch TV, surf the Internet, and text, they are leading our young people down the drain, to lives of drudgery in a service economy.

British Columbia Should Get it Right For It’s Own Good

November 3rd, 2008

I have always thought that if British Columbia really had it on the ball, it would make itself over as a fisheries, forestry, and wildlife management park. In other words, British Columbia would get itself designated as a provincial or federal park, a park in which planners, ethicists, scientists, and economists would test ecological and business management plans, models, and techniques, over both the short and long terms, and often side by side. For example, various runs of salmon on various sections of the coast would experience alternative management regimes.

In essence, British Columbia would flower; it would become a research park supported by funds from all over the world and by international tourism.

That reality really would put British Columbia on the map.