By W. Wayt Gibbs

“YOUR BATTERY IS NOW FULLY CHARGED,” ANNOUNCED THE LAPTOP COMPUTER

to its owner, Donald A. Norman, with enthusiasm—perhaps even a hint of pride?—in its synthetic voice. Norman, a chief advocate of the notion that computers and appliances ought to be

programmed with something akin to emotions, might normally have smiled at the statement. Instead he blushed—and no doubt wished that his computer could share his embarrassment. For at that moment. Norman was onstage at a dais, having addressed a conference room of cognitive scientists and computer researchers, and his Powerbook was still plugged into the public address system. Many in the audience chuckled at the automated faux pas and shook their heads.

The moderator, flustered, shot Norman a less than sympathetic look.

And yet we’ve all been there. Our cell phones ring during movies. Telemarketers interrupt our dinners with friends. Our laptops throw up screensavers in the middle of presentations. “You’ve got mail!” derails our train of thought just as we get in the groove.

To be sure, distractions and multitasking are hardly new to the human condition. “A complicated life, continually interrupted by competing requests for attention, is as old as procreation,” laughs Ted Selker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. But increasingly, it is not just our kids pulling us three ways at once; it is also a relentless barrage of e-mail, alerts, alarms, calls, instant messages and automated notifications, none of them coordinated and all of them oblivious to whether we are busy—or even present. “It’s ridiculous that my own computer can’t figure out whether I’m in front of it, but a public toilet can,” exclaims Roel Vertegaalof Queen’s University in Ontario.

Humanity has connected itself through roughly three billion networked telephones, computers, traffic lights— even refrigerators and picture frames— because these things make life more convenient and keep us available to those we care about. So although we could simply turn off the phones, close the e-mail program, and shut the office door when it is time for a meeting or a stretch of concentrated work, we usually don’t. We just endure the consequences.

“We take major productivity hits with each interruption,” says Rosalind Picard, a cognitive scientist at the M.I.T. Media Lab. People juggle the myriad demands of work and daily life by maintaining a mental list of tasks to be done.

An interruption of just 15 seconds causes most people to lose part of that to-do list, according to experiments by Gilles 0.Einstein of Furman University.

Numerous studies have shown that when people are unexpectedly interrupted, they not only work less efficiently but also make more mistakes. “It seems to add cumulatively to a feeling of frustration,” Picard reports, and that stress response makes it hard to regain focus. It

isn’t merely a matter of productivity and the pace of life. For pilots, drivers, soldiers and doctors, errors of inattention can be downright dangerous.

“If we could just give our computers and phones some understanding of the limits of human attention and memory, it would make them seem a lot more thoughtful and courteous,” says Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research. Horvitz, Vertegaal, Selker and Picard are among

a small but growing number of researchers trying to teach computers, phones, cars and other gadgets to behave less like egocentric oafs and more like considerate colleagues.

To do this, the machines need new skills of three kinds: sensing, reasoning and communicating. First a system must sense or infer where its owner is and what he or she is doing. Next it must weigh the value of the messages it wants to convey against the cost of the disruption. Then it has to choose the best mode and time to interject.

Each of these pushes the limits of computer science and raises issues of privacy, complexity or reliability. Nevertheless, “attentive” computing systems have begun appearing in newer Volvos, and IBM has introduced Websphere communications software with a basic busyness sense. Microsoft has been running extensive in-house tests of a much more sophisticated system since 2003. Within a few years, companies may be able to offer every office worker a software version of the personal receptionist that only corner-suite executives enjoy today.

But if such an offer should land in your inbox, be sure to read the fine print before you sign. An attentive system, by definition, is one that is always watching. That considerate computer may come to know more about your work habits than you do.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 905