The Hindu Business Line : Smart on the job

Who are better at work — the young or the older? To see whether young people really can multitask more effectively than older people, the Oxford Future of the Mind Institute conducted a study comparing Net Geners, aged 18 to 21 years, with people of 35 to 39, reports Don Tapscott in Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is changing your world ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

The researchers noticed that compared to the older group, the Net Geners performed 10 per cent better on intensive problem-solving exercises without disruption, but “interruptions from communication-based messages (phone call, call text message, or IM) caused the Net Geners to lose their cognitive advantage over their older counterparts.”

Thus, despite being able to think more quickly than the older people, the Net Geners are less effective at recovering from disruption when faced with a complex cognitive task, the study found; and, “the thirty somethings caught up in speed and accuracy.”

Yet, Tapscott wonders if the lab research was sophisticated enough to measure the complexity of what occurs in the real world. He finds the Net Geners fast at switching tasks and blocking out background noise.

“They can work effectively with music playing and news coming in from Facebook. They can keep up their social networks while they concentrate on work; they seem to need this to feel comfortable.”

The author concludes that the Net Geners have learned to live in a world where they’re bombarded with information, so that they can block out the TV or other distractions while they focus on the task at hand.

And, on the common complaint that the young suffer from ‘attention deficit disorder,’ he cites the opinion of Marc Prensky, thus: “Their attention spans are not short for games, for example, or for music, or rollerblading, or for spending time on the Internet, or anything else that actually interests them… It isn’t that they can’t pay attention, they just choose not to.”

Enlightening read.

Wired to the roof

A crime has been reported and investigation is on… The authorities find no garden on the roof-top but a satellite dish, over a metre in diameter, on a powered azimuth mount.

“We don’t know where it was pointed because when we gained access, it was parked in the vertical position, but it was plugged into a bunch of black boxes in the hall…. There’s also a cell antenna on the roof, and that’s plugged into what appears to be a custom GNU radio box, and they’re all switched through the server rack in the living room,” reports Joe, a character in Halting State by Charles Stross ( www.orbitbooks.net).

What is GNU radio, asks Liz? “It’s a soft radio. You plug a sufficiently fast digital signal processor onto the back of an analogue-to-digital converter and a wire, and simulate the radio procedurally. Run a program and it’s a TV receiver, run a different program and it’s a cellphone base station,” Joe explains.

The hardware, in his estimate, is worth ‘somewhere north of 20,000 euros.’ And it might have been used for ‘sucking down naughty satellite broadcasts and feeding them to friends.’ Or, the perpetrator “might have been snooping on phone calls... or running an anonymous cellular phone remixer to bypass the security services…”

Gripping narrative.

Numbers rule the universe

As a techie, if you are fond of numbers, here is what you may love to read: Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of science and the great minds behind them by Clifford A. Pickover ( www.oup.com).

Numbers do seem to rule the universe, the author observes. “Numerical patterns describe the arrangement of florets in a daisy, the reproduction of rabbits, the orbit of the planets, the harmonies of music, and the relationships among elements in a periodic table.”

Mathematical theories and formulas have predicted phenomena that were confirmed years after the theory was proposed, he adds. “For example, Maxwell’s Equations predicted radio waves. Einstein’s Field Equations suggested that gravity would bend light and that the universe is expanding.”

An apt quote of Russian mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky that Pickover mentions is that “there is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not someday be applied to the phenomena of the real world.”

Suggested for a detailed study.

CD melancholy

The first commercially released CD was Abba’s ‘The Visitors,’ in August 1982, inform Danny Danziger and Mark McCrum in The Thingummy: A book about those everyday objects you just can’t name ( www.rbooks.co.uk). “Ironically, as the CD was being launched Abba were splitting up – this was to be their last album.”

It’s certainly a melancholy listen, the authors rue.

“Both sets of partners were divorcing each other, and the songs have lyrics about failed relationships, ageing, and the loss of innocence.” Three years, however, had to pass by before a CD release could hit a million copies: ‘Brothers in Arms’ (1985) from Dire Straits.

While the rise of the CD struck at the future of the 8-track tapes and vinyl, what we now see may perhaps be a return of the melancholy the new medium had started off with, “as increasing numbers of music-lovers download their choice of artists straight from the Internet.”

Educative material.

Frozen disk

To the trained ear, it is possible to hear the death rattle of a hard disk as it prepares to give up, guides Peter J. Bentley in The Undercover Scientist: Investigating the mishaps of everyday life ( www.landmarkonthenet.com).

“You may start to hear a rougher whine above the noise of the fans. You may even hear a noticeable scrapping noise. Sometimes a period of heavy use over several hours can exacerbate the problem.”

A disk repair program may help, but if the computer is not able to recognise the hard disk, you may try holding the computer at different angles, advises Bentley. “Sounds crazy, but if the read heads are scrapping a misaligned platter, it can enable you to access the disk just long enough to retrieve your data.”

For the really desperate, here is one more tip: “Some people have found that removing the drive, placing it in a freezer bag and leaving it in the freezer for 30 minutes can bring the drive back to life for a few minutes. The internal components shrink in the cold, freeing bearings and stuck heads.”

The author reminds that it is folly to expect computer components to last forever.

Therefore, “If you want to keep your data, it’s best to assume that it will all go wrong tomorrow and make sure it’s backed up today!”

Recommended addition to your ‘to read’ list.

Practise patience

Does the hourglass icon provoke anger in you at the slow speed of the machine?

Or when a page takes longer to download, do you keep obsessively refreshing the screen?

“Patience, the ability to wait without irritation, is a most useful skill and a first cousin to acceptance or equanimity,” says Tony Wilkinson in The Lost Art of Being Happy: Spirituality for sceptics ( www.macmillanindia.com).

“Its essence is to enable us to enjoy what is happening even when nothing much is happening, or when what is happening now is keeping us from what we see as the main event.”

The great thing about patience, according to Wilkinson, is the frequency and scale of the opportunities which modern life offers for its practice!

“Waiting for train or tube or bus, standing in a queue at the supermarket or anywhere else, waiting for loved ones to get ready, playing the same game yet again for a small child, repeating the mundane tasks of the day every day – the list is long…”

Therapeutic messages.

Virtual concierge

How does the virtual concierge service work?

“Accessed via the hotels’ free high-speed Internet access systems, eHost gives guests 24-hour access to the information normally provided by a traditional concierge, including area dining options, attractions, movies, shopping, transportation, and events in the immediate vicinity of the hotel where they are staying,” explain Malini Singh and Jaya B. George in Housekeeping: Operations, design and management ( www.jaicobooks.com).

The eHost service can also provide weather and airline information, email access and also conduct an online survey, apart from offering game and e-greetings facilities, the authors note.

Of assistance to the industry people.

Tailpiece

“You know what happened before the cable snapped?”

“An anchor dropped on it?”

“No, the cable said, ‘I need a break!’”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in

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