clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

Well, here's the essential history of multitasking: it's introduced as an attempt to make early computers slightly less rubbish; someone applies the concept to human behaviour; someone else says, "You know, that's what women do"; it thus becomes fixed in the popular mind as axiomatically desirable, and if you say different, that reveals you fear progress and beat your wife.

But a single CPU can do only one thing at a time (if you're using a Mac, sometimes not even that). Really, it simply flicks its focus back and forth; it's similar with humans. Multitasking ought to have been called "not-giving-anything-your-full-bleeding-attention-tasking". It's what women do, because, these days, it's what we all do - compulsively but proudly: an addiction we label a skill. First Born can't play a computer game without also having the TV on, conducting conversations in three chatrooms, writing an email, creating a PKing video and disagreeing with his mother. He is the future.