One of the things I will never want to miss out on is dropping my dear daughter at school. She is 6 now, in standard 1, but quite capable of putting up a conversation during our early morning drive to the school. Every day turns out to be different, where the contributing factors could be me getting up late or the exercise of waking up my daughter stretches a little extra. But, apart from all these, there are things that make every day a different experience – both positive and negative.

 

It was one of those bright beautiful mornings in the beginning of fall 2011, when on my way back after dropping my daughter at school I saw a remarkable display of multitasking and realized how dangerous it could be during a crash when practiced in real life, as compared to a simple computer desktop or laptop crashing while handling multitasking. Here goes the scenario of this multitasking practice:

 

Who - A lady in late thirties

(Doing) What – Driving a Mercedes CLS Coupe

Where (to) – who dares to ask!

 

Why do I bother narrating this? Well, there was a Crash, this time not an Operating System on a desktop or laptop or a server that interrupts my regular job life, but the expensive CLS Coupe, which halted the busy office hour traffic, and I was one of those hundreds of people stuck in the jam. But my position in the halted traffic was very next to the scene, and rolling down my window glasses could add the audio to the nice visual that was being put up by the lady against the most decent traffic enforcement officer I have ever seen. From the ongoing skit what I could gather is what I am mentioning as the most fatal multitasking implementation.

 

So, as the Traffic enforcement officer talked, I could gather the multitasking environment, where the involved tasks were more of converging technologies. A phone glued to the lady’s left hand fingers and connected to left ear, the right hand punching SMS on the second smart phone (real smart eh!), and (unbelievably) a tablet lying on the front passenger seat helping the lady refer to a chain of emails. There’s more in the task list, the tiny expensive makeup kit is open and placed on the front cup holder, which is helping the lady save time by finishing up the makeup (may be the 7th coating) while she performs the least attention seeking task (not in my opinion) of driving in busy traffic around school area. Isn’t it amazing, how competent human could be. I don’t intend to be gender biased, as in this situation, the performer could be a man using a saver or even a nose trimmer, other things being equal.

 

So, imagine what could have gone wrong? Could be just luck, that’s what she would blame it on as on any of the earlier days she never crashed. But even when I rave my imagination at the highest dreamy level, still I fail to visualize how someone can drive with both hands off the steering wheel, eyes on emails and focus shifting between phone conversation, SMS, emails and makeup. Well, maybe that’s what is the wisdom that is being passed to the next generation also and evading acknowledgment of this irresponsible behavior and misinterpretation of the advantages of these new smart gadgets that are innovated to add value to life rather than challenging the very existence of human life. Multitasking is not exploiting technology; rather it is exploring the technology and respecting the usage restrictions as a social being. What I mentioned above looks superficially smart, until they prove to be wrong and by that time it’s too late. These are instances of carelessness, which does not only harm you but is dangerous for others too. I do agree that Multitasking conveys the sense of “being smart”, but it’s the incompetency on our part when we mutilate the very definition of “being smart”. Got to go! My BlackBerry is ringing, need to pick it up… for sure I am not driving now!