Multi-tasking ourselves to madness

A weekend story on the horrendous instances of children being left in sweltering cars to die points up out, that multi-tasking aside, the human brain is being pushed too far to function well.

Some of the children who died were left in cars through simple negligence and selfishness -- their parents used the car as a babysitter and gave no thought to their children's well-being. But a number of the deaths resulted from parents who, pressed for time or consumed by duties, simply forgot their child was in the backseat.

That's the nightmare many parents face when, rushing from one obligation to another or trying to juggle family responsibilities and a job, they startle from their work to wonder if they were supposed to pick up the baby at the sitter's, or who was dropping the 6-year-old at school or if it was their turn for the carpool.

We may feel the pressure to do it all, and do it all well, but our physiology is holding out against us. Our technology has outpaced our cognitive functioning and, to some extent, we're creating an environment in which humans can't comfortably live.

When the first wave of stories about people declaring email bankruptcy -- sending out blanket messages that they had fallen so behind on their emails that they were simply killing all messages and starting from scratch, or abandoning email altogether, many of us found it novel or amusing. But the more I read of it, the more sense it made. Setting boundaries on technology, work requirements and social commitments may amount to simple survival.