> That's far less exciting, and probably also kind of obvious to most knowledge workers.
I think his point was that, obvious or not, many knowledge workers organize their work that way and this will actively cause psychological harm.
I wasn't fond of his technology metaphors either, but I think the point he wanted to make was a valid one.
Though, using the metaphors as a tool of argumentation might also make sense because do use terms like "multitasking" a lot when describing situations where you have to switch around between different activities a lot (and implicitly justifying it because the activity is also seen as simple and basic - because computers do it all the time)
So it might be useful to drill down on those metaphors and show how incorrect they actually are.
(If you want to nitpick on the metaphors, I think he had threads in computers come off too easily: As probably every kernel developer can tell you, OS context switch absolutely do involve a complicated machinery of instructions - and as every application developer knows, having multiple threads can absolutely lead to chaos if you have no strategy how to manage them)
I think his point was that, obvious or not, many knowledge workers organize their work that way and this will actively cause psychological harm.
I wasn't fond of his technology metaphors either, but I think the point he wanted to make was a valid one.
Though, using the metaphors as a tool of argumentation might also make sense because do use terms like "multitasking" a lot when describing situations where you have to switch around between different activities a lot (and implicitly justifying it because the activity is also seen as simple and basic - because computers do it all the time)
So it might be useful to drill down on those metaphors and show how incorrect they actually are.
(If you want to nitpick on the metaphors, I think he had threads in computers come off too easily: As probably every kernel developer can tell you, OS context switch absolutely do involve a complicated machinery of instructions - and as every application developer knows, having multiple threads can absolutely lead to chaos if you have no strategy how to manage them)