No, I’m not talking about Certified Public Accounts. I’m speaking of Continuous Partial Attention Syndrome. I ran across this during one of my daily geek news scouring sessions and it caught my attention, no pun intended. I must admit I’m a sufferer. Almost all my friends are sufferers (I’m looking at you Brandon).

As I write this I have 3 email clients open (Gmail, Squirrel Mail, and Thunderbird), four IM windows open, six tabs in my browser open (low for me), I have two monitors plastered with Web browsers and other applications, with 24 applications open in my taskbar (Flash, FTP, Email, Browsers, IM, Photoshop, etc.), I’m messing around with Winamp playing some music, there’s an MP3 player beside my PSP, I have 2 phones on my desk (mobile and a business line), etc. etc. I’m writing this article while sending the link to umpteen people over 3-4 different IM networks (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.). How do we manage? I mean, I know I’m nowhere near the worst when it comes to this kind of thing but when I consider all the things that are dividing my attention — at this very moment — I can hardly believe I can get any one thing done. But I can, and do.

On top of this I keep coveting new gadgets. I’ve been seriously considering getting a Blackberry for business use and I’ve been thinking about buying a Sidekick to replace my aging mobile phone. For some reason, even though I have a perfectly good MP3 player (more than one if you count the PSP), I’ve been desiring an Ipod lately. Why? I have no idea.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, CPA. Is it a syndrome or just a side-effect of our technological progress? Is it fundamentally changing the way in which our brains work and how we function and respond in social situations? I don’t know, I’d say so.

I’ve been traveling down this road for the last decade or two and I have a feeling that once you’ve entered this world and stayed around long enough it’s very difficult to reform. I can still manage to remember to turn off my mobile phone when I go to a movie. But I don’t turn it OFF, I just turn it to “vibrate” thinking I might miss something really important if I don’t.

I’d say I was going to make a conscious effort to reform, at least part of the time, but I know at this point it would be nearly impossible so I won’t bother.

Think I’ll just chalk this up as one more thing to forget to worry about. Yeah, that sounds good…oh look I got an email!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 24th, 2006 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Living and Breathing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.