I wonder if when I forget the thing I wanted to look up on my phone or laptop by the time I've unlocked the screen, it's the same thing happening as with the doorway effect. from reading "On Intelligence" I did get the idea that our use of functional brain structures for location can be used more generally for virtual locations... makes sense if a computer interface is, in the brain, like a place even without direct analogies to physical spaces, like in so-called virtual worlds--we already use "navigation" and "location" to talk about "moving around" a computer interface
@timorl it doesn't happen all the time though, right? the section on further research on Wikipedia makes me think that there could be aids to prevent that from happening by reducing distractions during the transition. like maybe instead of showing the last thing you were looking at on your phone, you go to a blank prompt after login, maybe with a button to pull up your previous workspace... send like a potential difficulty is the UI doesn't know what's distracting vs what's relevant because it can't know what state you hold in your head https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorway_effect#Further%20Research
