[rhodri]

good observation. makes me think also about the tendency of computers and the internet to actually slow us down in our work!

their general-purpose nature means that our minds take on the additional complexity of context switching as we use our tools for multiple simultaneous tasks, and indeed this generality means that they can be quickly adapted to new contexts. contrast this to specialist tools which, once learned, provide significant increases in efficiency in the specific context to which they have been adapted (including the benefits of increased concentration owing to lack of distraction!) but cannot always be re-engineered easily to suit new contexts.

[TeMPOraL]

To be honest, it's the fault of current UX trends of making everything so dumb that people can be "proficient" in a program within first few seconds of seeing it for the first time. General-purpose computer is perfectly able to switch between many highly-specialized tools on the fly. It's just that powerful, efficient tools are rarely built nowadays - they've been replaced by pretty looking toys that sell fast.