Technology Is Ruining Our Lives

Here's a somewhat long article from the NY Times Magazine on how experts strive to optimize the delivery and recognition of information. The article mentions how distracted people are in the modern workplace because of the very things that help us get our jobs done (e-mail, cell phones, etc). A UC Irvine group conducted a study where they looked over the shoulders of workers at 2 West Coast companies:

Each employee spent only 11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted and whisked off to do something else. What's more, each 11-minute project was itself fragmented into even shorter three-minute tasks, like answering e-mail messages, reading a Web page or working on a spreadsheet. And each time a worker was distracted from a task, it would take, on average, 25 minutes to return to that task. To perform an office job today, it seems, your attention must skip like a stone across water all day long, touching down only periodically.

Coincidentally, CNN has an article that mentions a related point on how technology that keeps us connected can be psychologically unhealthy. Geoffrey Bowker is

executive director of Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology and Society, which studies technology's impact on culture.
...
"This is always the case with new technology. Often the effects are paradoxical," Bowker said. "The overall upside is that we can maintain a rich social and cultural life while dashing from pillar to post. The overall downside is that our spiritual development -- which requires empty time, contemplation -- is suffering enormously."