(FORTUNE Magazine) – After years of using three large-screen personal computers in his office, Andersen Consulting R&D director Anatole Gershman has come to the only possible conclusion: He needs another machine. Upgrading from technology trio to a computational quartet may seem an exercise in excess, but there is methodology to Gershman's madness. If he had four PCs, he says, he'd use one as an info ticker, displaying timely and relevant bitstreams. He'd use another as a communications portal, handling his e-mail and online interactions. The third computer would be video-linked to Andersen common rooms and cafeteria so that Gershman could, say, stroll over to chat if he saw his friends congregating over coffee. The fourth machine, of course, would be the one on which he actually does the hard work. "I'm not there yet," he notes, "but that's where I would like to be."

As Mae West observed, too much of a good thing can be wonderful. With display technologies offering ever higher resolution and PC prices falling ever lower, the image of the office cubicle as multiplex theater is no techno fetish. After all, even the largest screens simply can't be split or segmented ad infinitum. Returns rapidly diminish. So managers will likely be fruitful and multiply. The idea of three or four computer screens per desktop will seem no sillier or more disturbing than today's desktop reality of three or four working phone lines. Indeed, it's far easier to scan four screens than it is to juggle three calls.

Of course, walls of monitors are hardly unique. Data-heavy environments, such as foreign-exchange or derivatives trading desks, for example, are breeding grounds for multiple screens. TV news producers have always had multiscreen arrays from which to select camera angles. And security guards in office complexes, malls, and casinos often track upwards of a dozen security-cam screens. To take a more recent example, pilots flying the Boeing 777 have six programmable video screens that allow them to monitor flight conditions as they navigate the world's most sophisticated large commercial jet.

Suddenly, that lonely desktop PC with its puny Palm companion looks forlorn and inadequate. A powerful case could be made that there's not nearly enough visual bandwidth and far too few screens in the "managerial cockpits" that run global enterprises in an increasingly intense, fast-paced, and turbulent marketplace. Maybe we're misunderstanding the "information overload" challenge; perhaps the problem isn't that there's too much information, but rather that there is not enough surface area to display all the information in a way that can create coherent wholes.

Let's not confuse the ongoing increases in processing power and bandwidth with increased display. A digitally enhanced peephole does not a bay window make. Put it another way: Quantity can be as important as quality. Do you want, say, laparoscopic surgeons repairing your knee to have to peer into a grainy nine-inch black-and-white TV screen or have the benefit of two 24-inch color monitors showing different angles of your knee?

The looming presence of screen banks on desktops--or hanging on cubicle walls--underscores the point that the real scarcity in today's economy isn't time or money but attention. When three or four screens are constantly bidding for executive eyeballs, there's no question that attention is spread thin. That makes the ability to prioritize even more important. The multiscreened manager becomes a scanner searching for patterns, cues, and clues in addition to performing the tasks and responsibilities of the job.

Most executives will be more in touch with what they need to know if they are surrounded by more media. Effective executives had better know when to focus on a given screen. Although "management by walking around" will always have its place, the new reality of office multiplexes may give executives powerful reasons to stay put. If, in fact, they can keep an eye on common rooms, cafeterias, and customer-service facilities, they have far better chances to pick their spots to intervene. Instead of jumbling everything on a single screen, they can scan the virtual corporate horizons as they choose.

This may conjure up imagery from Rear Window, with voyeuristic managers monitoring the action. But then, the ability to pay attention to multiple stimuli is a core competence for leaders of either new- or traditional-economy firms. Desktop multiplexes will be how managerial attention is paid. By the way, did I mention that Anatole's office has no real windows?

MICHAEL SCHRAGE is co-director of the MIT Media Lab's e-markets initiative and author of Serious Play. Reach him at michael_schrage@fortunemail.com.