All Signs Point to the Fractal Self as a Multitasking but Fragmented, Fractured Self

Twisted Mist by Cory Ench

From Douglas Rushkoff's Present Shock:

"... Wired magazine announced to the world that although digital real estate was infinite, human attention was finite ..." (p. 124)

"When the social is relegated to the multitasking digital environment, we expect the [negative] results we have been witnessing ..."

"... [W]e are living multiple roles simultaneously, without the time and cues we normally get to move from one to the other." (p. 126)

I have been delving into a study on multitasking that states the obvious and the expected, but nevertheless it sheds more light with respect to the relation of stress to (online, digital) multitasking (ACM Digital Library for UTD users, free download courtesy of Gloria Mark). In summary, the study mainly concludes that heavy ICT (information and communication technology) users who engage in multitasking (broadly defined as window switching from one task, application, or web page to another) tend to experience increased stress levels:

"Stress is positively associated with the amount of multitasking" (p. 41)

However,

"Although our study found that increased use of computers (both in terms of window switching and duration) were [sic] associated with increased stress, our results suggest that type of computer activity may be correlated with lower stress. [That is,] [s]ocial media use was found to coincide with less stress ... " (p. 49)

I interpret these conclusions thusly: as the analog self disperses its time and attention digitally (it "goes digital"), the act of multitasking has the potential to go in either a positive or negative direction. Another way of putting it is that in the act of fragmenting, fracturing, or orienting the self to the realm of the "infinite"/infinite possibility, the fractal self, if you will, can be a good or bad thing, or possibly both at once. Indeed, while this study and those to which it refers do not directly address the subjects' perception of identity, they add credence to Rushkoff's assertion that the person (self) that is immersed in the digital almost always tends to confront digiphrenia. For him, multitasking is being in several places at once (IM or texting service here, e-mail or Twitter account there, and so on) - an affordance granted by digital media - but it is one which the (analog) self struggles to maintain for sustained periods of time. At least, he would argue, it cannot sustain the "juggling act" without the negative consequences of stress, social/workplace/domestic strain, or depression/unhappiness. Dire consequences for multitasking, for being too immersed in the digital to be sure, but must there always be?