My last post touched on the idea of different devices (TVs, computers, mobile handsets) acting as a point-of-entry into the infosphere, or cyberspace. As these devices become more and more ubiquitous, woven as inextricably into the fabric of 21st century life as the telephone was into the 20th, it’s conceivable that we will have constant access to cyberspace, this parallel universe, and possibly with multiple points of contact at once. The generation coming of age in the information age is already here, and this is a reality for them today; it should come as no surprise that there’s a significant generation gap between this generation and the ones that precede it — not only in the way they use technology, but in their entire weltanschauung.

Of course, when it comes to studying the generation gap, no institution has more to gain (or lose) than the US Army and Navy recruiters. This generation — 18- to 24-year-olds — comprises their primary source of new personnel. Being able to approach and communicate with this cohort on their own terms is crucial. For this reason, understanding how this generation thinks was the subject of a presentation delivered at the Annual Navy Workforce Research and Analysis Conference of 2007; the powerpoint from the presentation is available, and it covers a wide variety of issues related to the “millennial” generation and the problem of staffing the US Army and Navy in the year 2025 — but of particular interest is the section on the way this cohort’s social lives, their culture, and the technology they use are inseparable.

The Navy provides us with some interesting information about this generation:

• They have never lived in a world without cellphones and the Internet
• They cram 8½ hours of media exposure into 6½ hours daily
• 2 in 5 eight- to fourteen-year-olds have a cellphone; 1 in 4 have a PDA or mobile internet device
• 26% of the time they’re using media, they’re using more than one medium at once

In other words, the “millennials” are not only digitally connected, they’re also multitaskers, and are utterly at home multitasking since they’ve been doing it virtually their entire lives. The Navy’s presentation describes them as a generation accustomed to “continuous partial attention,” never really devoting 100% of their concentration to any one medium, but valuing different forms of communication equally: “Teens are creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinction between online and real world interactions. And they largely ignore the difference between the two.”

I think it’s important to consider the ramifications of this without making value judgements about the fact that every child born after, say, 1990 is accustomed to splitting his or her attention between 2 or more media at once, and to just accept it. There’s a social premium placed on a long attention span, and an ability to concentrate, but if the demands of work and play were different — and more multifarious — isn’t it probable that an ability to multitask and to split one’s attention between several things at once would be of more value than singlemindedness? If the people of the 21st century are going to “live comfortably in both worlds at once,” wouldn’t the mind that can achieve “continuous partial attention” be the better adapted one?

To provide an illustration: there is a generation of adults who think nothing of sitting down in a quiet room and reading a book for hours, but for them, the thought of dividing their attention between reading and other actions seems pointless. There’s another, younger generation for whom the thought of reading in silence is unbearable. They can and do read — as long as there’s music, a friend online to chat to, and maybe a TV on in the background. But to just read would be boring.

In fact, I’d go farther than that — I posit that for someone raised multitasking, to sit and just read, with no music playing and no breaks to check Facebook, would be not only boring but downright excruciating. It’s here that it gets interesting: for the “millennials,” it’s not only unappealing to do one thing at once, it actually becomes more difficult. When one is accustomed to doing 5 things at once, trying to focus one’s attention on a single action at a time doesn’t sufficiently occupy the mind, or at least it doesn’t occupy it in the way to which it is accustomed. The urge to wander off and see what’s next and what else can be done at the same time is a constant distraction. Attention has been fractured to the point that it cannot be refocussed into a single channel again.

Speaking from personal experience, as a child I was unable to listen to a teacher without simultaneously (and absentmindedly) drawing doodles. If I was taking notes, that was one thing, but if I was listening without writing, my pen had to find something else to do, or it developed what I can only describe as restless leg syndrome of the hand — which actually made it harder for me to focus. As I moved into highschool, I found it literally impossible to concentrate on homework (especially non-verbal assignments like math) without music playing. It is as if my right brain is working, and my left brain, without something to occupy it, sits tapping a pencil noisily on the adjacent desk, demanding attention. And yes — I’m guilty, on occasion, of turning down the music on my iPod so I can hear the YouTube video I loaded while reading Wired.com, even though the is TV on. Extrapolate this into an entire lifetime of performing different tasks simultaneously, tasks usually related to consuming (or producing media), and you get some sense of how hard it would be for these kids to sit in a classroom and listen to someone talk for 3 hours.

The effect this will have on education and industry is profound. Most teachers would be offended, I imagine, if they knew that the class they were talking to was simultaneously reading nytimes.com and chatting on MSN. There’s a sense that to divide one’s attention devalues it. And employers probably feel they’re not getting the highest possible levels of productivity from employees who are updating their spreadsheets of quarterly revenue and their Myspace pages at the same time. Certainly there’s a likelihood that retention falls when the listener is dividing his or her attention, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a lack of appreciation or respect for the task on the part of the listener, and it definitely doesn’t translate into a drop in overall productivity or efficiency. It is simply a different model of mental performance.

It’s important that this be taken into account by people — employers, teachers, and even loved ones — when considering how they interact with this generation, and in structuring learning and working paradigms. I’m not sure this trend is one we should discourage, even if we could — at least, not out of hand. There are doubtless many ways in which our natural tendency to multitask can be applied towards constructive ends. Instead of trying to mould human nature according to what we’re trying to accomplish, it’s more productive to mould our means to accomodate human nature.

There’s a scene near the end of the first act of the 2006 film Children of Men where the protagonist, Theo, goes to visit his wealthy brother Nigel. They talk over breakfast, and Theo’s nephew Alex sits at the table as well — not talking, not eating, not responding in any way to the world around him. He’s hooked into some sort of device which obviously links him to cyberspace; though his eyes are closed, he taps his fingers madly. I’ve heard this scene described as “chilling;” it seems as though this boy has lost the ability to communicate with others. But we can’t see what Alex sees. Is Alex shut off from the world around him, lost to communication? Or is he connected on more levels than the other two men sitting at the table, albeit in a mediated, less focussed way: communicating in a dialect we can’t understand?

As a culture, we lament the death of conversation and “real” communication; we hold face-to-face interactions in higher esteem than we do Emails, text messages and nudges over Facebook. Is that fair? Is one more efficient at conveying information than the other? There are people who also lament the death of letter-writing, but if you include Emails, texts, blogs, and other online notes, today’s teens are creating a body of written material that would put the Brontë sisters to shame (at least, if you hold quantity over quality — I wouldn’t argue that any of it is worth reading for someone without a vested interest). Online communication may or may not be “worse,” but it’s certainly more varied and more copious, and taken as a whole, has more revolutionary potential than traditional forms of communication, at this stage in human history.

For hundreds of years, we’ve been lamenting that we could get more accomplished in life if we could be in two places at once. It seems our wish has finally been granted — what are we going to do about it?