Jonathan M Gitlin at Ars Technica has a good bit about the supposed evils of multitasking on your computer at work:

The complaints against multitasking are the usual; you’re not as focused as you could be if you were just doing one thing at once, switching focus repeatedly actually makes you less productive as each time your brain takes a few moments to reprioritize tasks and so on.

I’m the first to admit that there’s a lot be said for shutting down everything else and focusing on a single task when you just need to power through and get something done, but these days talk of ‘multitasking’ seems to take the form of huffy managers cruising through the office, looking over shoulders and trying to catch a glimpse of someone looking at something “non-work-related”.

This, quite frankly, is a lame thing to do.

Gitlin again:

Employers seek ever-greater productivity from their workers, which means getting more work from them for the same amount of pay. Faced with that situation, it’s hardly surprising the cube-dweller responds by spending 15 minutes an hour looking at LOLCATs. Besides, I’m just old enough to remember the days before you used to be able to multitask; people used to sit at their desks reading the newspaper instead.

Technology has definitely exasperated this issue. It seems entirely acceptable for an employee to spend 10 minutes chatting with co-workers about the movie they saw on the weekend or 5 minutes on a personal phone call, but apparently just a glimpse at Facebook is an instant productivity killer. The message, I guess — and this is coming from those generally clueless about everything online — is that you can’t be working if you’re also on some website.

The real issue I have with this is one of trust. By constantly monitoring your employees’ screens, by installing filters and blocks, by blanket policies forbidding access at work, you’re essentially saying to your employees that you can’t trust them. “Why would you do this stupid work I’ve assigned you when you have fun internet things to look at?”

Could spending a lot of time on Facebook at work cause an employee to miss deadlines or produce sub-quality work? Absolutely. And those employees should face hell because of that. But you’re always smarter to criticize and (if necessary) discipline based on outputs, not process. The process is entirely subjective and unique to each person, whereas the outputs can be objective.

If the work is getting done, does it really matter if the worker is ‘multitasking’ all day, bouncing between windows and tasks like — as Gitlin puts it — a crack-smoking housefly?

Technology has led to a diversification of work styles.¹ There is no ‘right’ way to get things done in the computer age. Trying to establish one-size-fits-all processes, policies or rules — even for something as seemingly frivolous as ‘banning Facebook’ — is a losing battle.

Thanks to Ari Najarian for pointing me to the article.

Photo by Vedlia. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. I’m thinking of things like keyboard users vs. mouse; command line versus GUI; maximized versus juggled windows; open source versus Microsoft, etc etc. [↩]

I don’t really know much about author Mark Bauerlein or his book The Dumbest Generation: How The Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future but my initial impression is not a good one.

Bauerlein recently contributed a Boston Globe piece on 8 reasons why this is the dumbest generation that achieves the rare double-feat of being both incredibly out-of-touch and remarkably ironic — it’s a piece that hopes to demonstrate how dumb, vacant and empty-headed Generation Y (and Gen Z, or Generation TBD, or whatever) is made up entirely of stock photos and three-sentence descriptors.

In any case, I think it’s supposed to be pithy and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but even allowing for that it’s mostly stupid. So, in response, here are eight reasons why this is the smartest generation, presented without stock-photos and not split up across nine different pages.

They’re more politically & socially involved than ever before

Bauerlein writes that this generation is “encased in more immediate realities that shut out conditions beyond — friends, work, clothes, cars, pop music, sitcoms, Facebook.” This immediately brings to light the biggest problem with his arguments: while he claims to be criticizing this generation, he’s really just criticizing teenagers. Do teenagers tend to be egotistical and caught up in the goings-on of their own lives to the point of melodrama? They sure do. Is this a new phenomenon? Not at all.

Hell, the fact that Bauerlein thinks this generation is preoccupied by sitcoms shows how out-of-touch he is.

The big point is this, though: our generation is more politically involved and socially-conscious than ever before. Check out these stats from a USA Today article:

61% of 13- to 25-year-olds feel personally responsible for making a difference in the world, suggests a survey of 1,800 young people to be released today. It says 81% have volunteered in the past year; 69% consider a company’s social and environmental commitment when deciding where to shop, and 83% will trust a company more if it is socially/environmentally responsible. The online study — by two Boston-based companies, Cone Inc. and AMP Insights — suggests these millennials are “the most socially conscious consumers to date.”

They spend way less time watching TV and more time reading

Bauerlein trots out the old “Kids don’t READ any more!” argument, referring specifically to books. And, sure, books don’t sell great — they’re on the decline. But that doesn’t mean Gen Y doesn’t read. In fact, whereas the boomers and Gen X tended to employ television as their major source of media, Gen Y is turning to the internet. And even with advances in video & audio online, you know how the vast majority of the internet is experienced? By reading.

From an article in World News Australia:

The survey, commissioned by social networking website MySpace and conducted by UK-based analyst The Future Laboratory, found a quarter of 18 to 24-year-olds had reduced their television watching in favour of social networking on the web.

They have massive networks to call upon

Bauerlein brings up the abundance of typos, abbreviations and misspellings in IM and Texting communication as a point to prove this is a ‘dumb generation’. I don’t much like that kind of typing either, but it’s hardly a sign of ‘dumbness’. In fact, most of these short-forms emerge because Gen Y is trying to cultivate an absolutely astronomical number of friendships and relationships.

The networking we’re seeing with young people today is unprecedented and of incredible value to business. Whereas in the past people didn’t start building their networks until they were in their late teens or early twenties, this generation is establishing these connections at 12 years old.

They have a worldwide platform for expressing themselves creatively

Bauerlein makes the ridiculous argument that “On MySpace, if you write clearly and compose coherent paragraphs with informed observations on history and current events, ‘buddies’ will make fun of you.” I’m really not sure where he’s getting this, unless he’s hanging out in some really stupid corners of the internet.

One of the benefits to social networks, blogs and other online platforms is that young people can and do share their thoughts and ideas on everything from TV to video games to politics. The opportunity to make yourself visible at a young age leads to career and portfolio opportunities that were roadblocked before. Just look at the legion of bloggers who have found book deals.

They seek entertainment that’s active, not passive

Bauerlein points to the blockbuster sales of Grand Theft Auto 4 as a reason for this generation’s ‘dumbness’, but he doesn’t offer much in the way of argument. I’d make the argument that Gen Y’s appetite for video games as opposed to television or movies is a sign of intelligence, not anti-intellectualism.

Gen Y demands interactivity with their media. TV shows like Lost have derived popularity from the fact that fans love to come online and talk about them — develop theories and look for clues. Even American Idol, a show that takes a lot of crap for lacking substance, succeeds with youth because they feel like they can be a part of it.

Involvement, in a lot of respects, IS intelligence. There’s a lot more to be derived from playing Grand Theft Auto 4 than, say, watching an episode of Miami Vice.

They have quick access to an astounding amount of information

Bauerlein, again, makes a confusing argument: “Digital natives, however, go to the Internet not to store knowledge in their minds, but to retrieve material and pass it along. The Internet is just a delivery system.”

I don’t really know what he’s getting at, but that may be because I’m not storing enough knowledge in my mind. I just keep giving all my knowledge away to my online buddies!

One of my favourite archetypical Gen Y traits is their ability to quickly settle an argument. A group of people will be sitting around a table wondering, say, who Bob Dole’s Vice Presidential candidate was and suddenly, within seconds, someone will have pulled the answer from their laptop or cellphone. This tends to mystify the hell out of a lot of baby boomers.

If Gen Y memorizes less information, it’s because we know how to wield the enormous repository of information that is the internet.

They’re forcing huge changes in education

Education is a topic I’m passionate about, and there’s no doubt that a lot needs to change in the way teachers approach their Gen Y, and younger, students, but Bauerlein’s argument that we’re in an “era of child-centered classrooms and self-esteem grading” is just tired. Especially since nobody is really able to prove that today’s students are really lacking in the smarts department globally:

According to Reena Nadler, program director of LifeCourse Associates, a marketing and human resources consultancy in Great Falls, Virginia, founded by generational experts Neil Howe and William Strauss, the millennial generation is turning the clichés on their heads. “Student achievement is rising,” says Nadler, a millennial herself. Today’s youth dedicate more hours to their studies and extracurricular activities than previous generations did.

I think there’s very real issues that arise when the students are digital natives and the teachers barely know how to turn a computer on, and we’re seeing the fruits of that, but that doesn’t imply there’s anything inherently wrong with this generation. That they’re forcing change in the way education happens is actually a testament to their abilities.

Because we’re young

It looks like Bauerlein just plain runs out of arguments with his eighth point. He probably should have just gone with seven reasons. Seven is lucky. His eighth argument is simply “because they’re young.” And young people are… stupid.

He’s sort of right, actually. Young people lack experience and, indeed, tend to be egocentric and melodramatic and prone to screwing up (all part of learning). But youth also brings with it, by its very nature, an incredibly wellspring of potential, which is what a lot of companies are just starting to realize:

“We have the best qualified generation since history,” says Patricia Vendramin, a sociologist at the Work & Technology Research Centre of the Fondation Travail-Université in Namur, Belgium. Millennials get work experience early, they’re flexible, they’re willing to relocate, and they’re open-minded, she adds. Also, “they are very skilled at using technology” and they’re true team players, Redmond says.

So much left to say

It’s unfortunate that authors like Bauerlein are able to draw booksales by treading on the same old “kids are stupid” ground so many others have walked for decades. I bet when he was younger there were older people saying he was dumb, too. You would think that experience would have taught him better than trotting out this the-kids-aren’t-alright nonsense. But, then, maybe those calling him dumb back then just happened to be right.

Thanks to the Brazeen Careerist Forum for the link to this article.

I’ve been reading a fair bit recently about privacy on Facebook. This has always been a hot topic, whether it’s because campus security at certain high-minded universities have used the service to keep tabs on student parties (and bust the rowdy-looking ones preemptively) or because employers are, more and more, checking out potential employee’s profiles before making job offers.

Some people find these kinds of things vaguely unsettling in a “Big Brother” sort of way. Local T.O blog Torontoist recently weighed in, after a pseudo-scandal where a university student was brought up on charges of cheating because he was running a study group through facebook:

As we’ve seen demonstrated, the whole frenzy isn’t about fairness. It’s that the rules have changed; Facebook is no longer the domain of the student alone, and students have good reason to be wary of newly watchful universities. With the medium’s shift away from “hot” or “cool” to a lukewarm blend of both, people like Chris Avenir [the student who got in trouble] or anyone else in the business of operating under the radar—for whatever reason—should probably think twice before all but advertising their activities.

“Be careful” seems to be the standard advice when it comes to social networking sites like Facebook and more ‘legitimate’ enterprises like getting a job. I’m not so sure it’s the right advice.

Being careful versus being smart

‘Be careful’ doesn’t quite make sense, especially if that advice comes with recommendations to use Facebook’s own privacy controls, because here’s the thing: privacy is dying. It implies that people have an expectation — maybe even a right — to not have people they don’t know check out their Facebook profile. But all the ideas behind social networking (communication, interaction, expansion of network, new friends, sharing) are contrary to any ideals of privacy. You cannot have both and, as a society, we’ve chosen: we like social networking.

It’s not about being careful. It’s about being smart. You should ABSOLUTELY have a Facebook account¹, and a LinkedIn account, and any sort of account that connects you with people in the industry you want to involve yourself in. These online platforms are rapidly becoming the online gateway to people and, in fact, for making introductions and strengthening connections they beat the snot out of old-fashioned conferences and trade show meet and greets.

With your accounts, you should operate under the assumption that everything you post is potentially viewable by anyone. Your boss, your parents, your teacher, and any and all deities you choose to associate yourself with — they can see it all: your party pictures, your favourite films, that quiz you filled out that told you that, out of all The Office characters, you’re most like Stanley — everything.

But that shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing, nor should you censor yourself significantly online. In fact, I’d urge people to be as honest as they can with their profiles: present your likes, dislikes, opinions, goals, your humour (hugely important). Use the online space to show the world who you are.

Concerns about privacy in the sense that maybe a potential employer will see it, and be offended and not hire you or whatever, are entirely outdated and almost insulting. You need to ask yourself if you’d ever really want to start a career with someone who just can’t handle the fact that you like to drink alcohol on weekends. Or if someone who can’t handle the fact that you occasionally use a certain f-word is really the kind of person you see yourself spending 40 hours a week with.

Selling You

It’s best to think of your online profiles as analogous to the clothes you wear everyday. Sure, you could wear a suit every day and look very presentable in the eyes of a bunch of stuffy older people, but you’ll get really uncomfortable before long (and the summers will be a chore). Or you could go all-out and wear a leather vest and 1993 grunge-era Levis, but people are going to judge you for that too. Best to split the difference, and wear something casual but presentable and at the same time uniquely you — something appropriate for both work and play.

A tortured analogy, maybe, but here we are, and the bottom line is this: your Facebook account is out there, and, just like with the clothes on your back, the only way to avoid being seen is to not show up at all. Generation Y should leverage social media as a way to find opportunities, welcome interactions from all people, but never censor their own true selves in the process.

Privacy is overrated anyway.

Photo by robleto. Licensed under Creative Commons.

1. I should say that, yes, I have some concerns about the long-term viability of Facebook. I like to ask people if they really think they’ll be using Facebook in five years. Odds are, we won’t be. But there will probably be something else that takes its place. [↩]

John Gruber linked to this interview with David Allen a while back. I’m just getting to reading it now. Allen is the mind behind GTD (or “Getting Things Done”), which is something I don’t know much about. (I’m interested, though. I plan to pick up the book.)

Anyway, in the interview Allen says this:

One of the problems that’s endemic with the younger generation people who have grown up with computers and with email they make the assumption that email is a fine medium for communicating anything and everything.

Which, for some reason, provoked a really strong emotional reaction in me as I read it. “He’s wrong!” I thought, imaginary daggers in my eyes. “He’s wrong wrong wrong.”

Thankfully, commenter Joost laid it down before I had to:

Please. One of the problems that’s endemic with the older generation is that they make the assumption that email is only appropriate for communicating a small narrowly defined subset of human communication.

Why do we have e-mail?

When I first started work, I’d write long, detail-heavy e-mails to my co-workers. My rationale was that it was better to cover all the bases all at once than risk the finer points being missed. My e-mails were (at least in my opinion) well-written, friendly and easy to understand.

Unfortunately, nobody read them.

A lot of my issue was just that I overestimated the amount of time people have for reading e-mail. A lot of older people regard it primarily as a nuisance, and like to spend as little time reading (skimming, really) e-mail as possible. And that’s okay. That much makes sense to me.

What NEVER made sense to me was the people who picked up the phone or waited until they saw me to communicate a message. Or, instead of sending a response, booked a meeting to discuss what I had e-mailed. If that’s how work is going to get done, I thought, why even HAVE e-mail?

Trusting technology

One of the really impressive things Generation Y does is communicate widespread messages effortlessly. If you’ve ever watched an event come together on facebook (or through another evite app) you know what I’m talking about. It’s simple: five minutes of work and a few clicks can result in a packed house the next night.

We trust that the app — the technology — is going to work. It’s going to effectively communicate the message.

The older generation seems to have trouble with this.

Image by m-c. Licensed under Creative Commons

Via Chris Bird: a nifty map of social networking sites based on their popularity in countries around the world.

Some thoughts:

• I’d love to see some historical data. It’d be neat to see Facebook’s growth versus myspace in English-speaking countries
• Why has Facebook been so so slow to launch international (non-English) versions of the platform? It’s only now that they’re getting going on that. It seems to me that the time spent developing the application system would have been better spent shoring up mindshare in big markets like India and Latin America.
• Friendster? REALLY, Asian Pacific?

This stuff may seem trivial now, but consider the future of business as a peer to peer network of contacts and resources. Your chosen platform may end up meaning more than you think.

Ed Gottsman at ZDnet writes:

The workplace won’t change because of Gen-Y’s values. It’ll change because of their tools. In particular, social networking tools. Now, if you’re like me you are sick unto death of hearing about MySpace, FaceBook and LinkedIn. But part of the reason they keep coming up is that they’re important.

There’s a bit too much exasperated-old-foginess coming out of this article, but Gottsman makes a good point here:

So one of the most important assets Gen-Y will bring to the workplace is its Facebook account: an enormous “rolodex” of acquaintances–probably larger, more varied and better maintained than those of top management. Enterprises will be well-advised to encourage cultivation of this contact list–in other words, to let their employees “play” on FaceBook–since this activity will serve as a source of new customers and recruits.

While I have mixed feelings on Facebook and its long term prospects (more on that later), there’s definitely something to the idea that Gen Y employees will bring social networking clout to businesses. Already businesses have seen the kind of success a timely link from digg, slashdot and BoingBoing can bring them. My own digg experience has shown that a front page appearance on a weekday during business hours can net a web site some 30,000 pageviews. Considering posting to digg costs $0, it’s hard to think of more effective advertising.

I do think this is an area where Gen Y will have to be smart, though. No matter how much the corporate landscape shifts, no one’s ever going to get hired because they have over 1,000 MySpace or Facebook friends. Especially if your social networking activities are limited to superpokes and Scrabulous. On the other hand, if someone happens to have regular IM or twitter contact with Jason Kottke, waxy or the gang at 37 signals, that’s an immediately valuable thing for business. That’s an employee who has the connections to get you major exposure across the web.

This shouldn’t just be limited to so-called ‘web’ companies, either. This is something that all businesses would do well to keep in mind, especially as more people — and not just the sketchy ‘SEO’ market lurking about these days — come into business with extensive social networking experience and knowledge.

Photo by Aristocrat. Licensed under Creative Commons.

The headline at forbes.com is Mister Softee Buys Cool, referring to yesterday’s announcement that Microsoft is in the process of a hostile takeover of Yahoo! and all their properties.

So, why is this merger/buyout in the works? Simple: It is all about the Facebook Nation. This is apparently the main focus of the Microsoft plan, as they have been slowly moving toward a greater relationship with Facebook for some time. Have you taken notice of the sea change to the look and feel of Microsoft? As a company, it has finally realized that “square corners” is not selling. Microsoft wants desperately to be hip. It owns the desktop, but it doesn’t own the action/nightlife.

Think of a teenager living in his parent’s home. He uses it as a place to flop, eat and wash. He tolerates his parents yet keeps them at a social distance. Once he has his wings, he is out of there. Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) has done a good job at capturing the early adoption of many of the Gen-Xers and now Gen-Y is up for grabs. This is the social generation with idealism.

It’s a good point and it throws the spotlight on something really interesting about this deal: Yahoo! wasn’t at the very top of Microsoft’s to-buy list when it comes to ‘hip’ web properties. What they really wanted, and have been angling for for months, is Facebook. But Mark Zuckerberg - worth billions and one year younger than me (dammit!) - wasn’t playing ball: Microsoft ended up only getting a small piece.

There’s no doubting that Microsoft desperately wants to foster a more youth-friendly image, but I’m not sure Yahoo! will do anything to help that. For the most part, Yahoo! is too big to really seem cool. Some of their properties have the right kind of cred: Flickr is definitely cool. Del.icio.us is pretty cool. Even the Fantasy Sports sites have potential. But Yahoo! Finance and News? The search engine itself? The mail program? These things are nowhere near as ‘cool’ as Google’s products. Plus, there’s not really any “Yahoo! Communities” on the level of Facebook, Myspace or even Digg.

Is it a bad deal? Probably not. If anything, it takes out a major third party in the Battle for the Web, leaving this as essentially a two-horse race. (With maybe Newscorp hanging out somewhere, far behind.) But any talk of the Yahoo! buy giving Microsoft more Gen Y appeal seems a little presumptuous.

Photo by Gnal. Licensed under Creative Commons

One of the more pervasive memes about Generation Y is that we’re narcissistic. It goes so far that one of the other names for “Generation Y” (in addition to Millennials and Nexus Generations, both of which makes us sound far too much like robots for my tastes) is the “Me Generation.” This can be seen to various degrees in a lot of writing about our generation. There’s mild stuff, like the article Generation Y: Connectivity & Enjoyment which just sort of oversimplifies the generational issues and sums it all up as this:

Contrary to their parents, for whom “the job” dictated everything, for generation why-ers, enjoyment comes first. They choose where and what kind of lifestyles they want to lead and then choose their careers accordingly.

But then there’s the far more negative slant, such as in this article from the Christian Science Monitor. They write:

A little smug self-absorption might be a time-honored trait of at least some subsets of the under-30 crowd.

But over the past few decades the prevailing disposition among college students – today labeled Generation Y or Millennials – has slid into full-blown narcissism, according to a study released this week.

The “all about me” shift means much more than lots of traffic at self-revelatory websites such as YouTube and Facebook. It points, says the study’s author, to a generation’s lack of empathy, its inability to form relationships – and worse.

I think the they labeled YouTube & Facebook as self-revelatory is fairly telling of their inability to really understand both what those websites and the generational attitudes they refer to really mean. YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and the other Social Networking sites aren’t fueled by egotistical tendencies — they’re driven by social tendencies. It’s not just about logging on and telling the world what you’re doing. It’s also about seeing what everyone else is doing. And for most, that’s the real compelling reason behind being part of a social networking site. If it was just one person sharing their thoughts, activities & photos with the world, you wouldn’t see anywhere near the same level of popularity. (Plus, it’d just be a blog — not that blogs and blog authors are egotistical!)

This worry that Gen Y has too much self-esteem is actually pretty funny when you think about it. I guess the concern is that we’re too confident and have unrealistic expectations. But the subtext seems to be “life sucks, and you should know that already.”

Is too much confidence harmful? I guess so. But a good deal less so that a bunch of people who have no faith at all in their own ability. Nobody with ‘realistic’ or less-than-realistic levels of self esteem has ever created, invented or changed anything. If you want to see a parade of so-called narcissists, look no further than this video.

It’s the optimism — that so many write off as a negative thing — that separates us from Gen X, who were known for their cynicism, amongst other things. And, sure, the optimism can in a lot of cases manifest itself as egotism or narcissism — and I’ll be the first to point out that that can be really really annoying — but even in spite of that it is this generation’s hope and belief in change that has most strongly defined it.

And, yeah, we expect to enjoy the things we do, at work and otherwise. That some people find that difficult to understand seems to indicate a problem with them, and not us, doesn’t it? Not to draw lines in the sand or anything.

Photo by Huro Kitty. Licensed under Creative Commons