Is Your Smart Phone Smarter than You?

I owe this posting to a friend of mine, who some happens to have the same name as me. If I recall correctly he said and I paraphrase, "How is it that your phone can download an mp3, surf the web, send a text message, conference call with your boss, and stream FM radio... but you can't drive while using your smart phone?"

I assumed that applied to morons, and I assumed myself to not be a moron. But I just got a smart phone last night, and I found I could not walk in straight line to my house while using it (something I could do well with a normal phone while text messaging the old fashion way). What happened?

I will call this the Smart Phone, Dumb User paradox, or SPDU paradox. Obviously the average human cannot use a smart phone any better than a normal cell phone while committing to a typical task. In fact, the multitasking performance goes down. Essentially, the human brain has so much RAM and can only process so much at once, i.e. our attention is limited. Really, the human brain can only do one task at a time, at least doing it well. When a person multitasks the brain just switches between two tasks very quickly. But, the efficiency the tasks are performed greatly drops. For instance, even with the advent of Blue Tooth, cell phone related vehicular accidents have not changed. Just because you use a hands-free phone won't make your driving habits better.

So why is it worse with smart phones? Probably because smart phones require a different interface to interact with it, i.e. scan-scrolling menus, swiping icons to activate them, digital key boards, et cetera. The more interactive the interface becomes the more the brain is required to interact with that interface. Normal cell phones required only to be told what to do by simply hitting buttons and would wait until the command was completed (sort of like LINUX, but with an interface). Now more is necessary and more of the brain's RAM is taken up.

Is the SPDU paradox the price we pay for our technology? Granted, the technology is incredible and definitely beneficial. I was rediscovering a childhood passion of studying the movement of the planets and the arrangement of constellations with my Google Sky app last night. But now I have no idea how to walk or talk to someone while I use my phone (unless they are on the phone with me). Welcome to the Information Age. Enjoy your depleting Random Access Memory until human evolution catches up.