From Tim Stahmer, a link to an article in Technology Review about the socialization of the web. The story at the beginning of the reaction at the Wall Street Journal’s technology conference when the wireless was turned off in the lecture hall reminds me of the complaints at NECC about spotty wireless.
“Forbidding live blogging at a technology conference, he remarked, ‘seems a very retrograde move.’ Mossberg responded hours later. ‘It is untrue that Kara and I banned live blogging at D3, from the ballroom or anywhere else,” he explained. ‘We merely declined to provide Wi-Fi, to avoid the common phenomenon that has ruined too many tech conferences–near universal checking of e-mail and surfing of the Web during the program.'”
While I can’t imagine how checking my email as I listen to the speaker is going to “ruin” the conference, I do think we sometimes overestimate our ability to multi-task. So much for the Zen notion of concentrating on one thing at a time. (You know…when you do the laundry, DO the laundry.) Bob Hanny, a professor I work with, claims that we can’t really multi task at all and are just fooling ourselves into believing that we can do it. And I wonder, can we really watch a movie and give our full attention to driving? Are we really listening to the message of the speaker, turning it over in our minds, when we are checking email or blogging? I suppose you can make a case for taking notes during the talk, but notes don’t require wireless acess. And then the whole notion of “live” blogging goes out the window.
Cell phones, in particular, are on my list of annoying devices. I have watched people walk out of classes while the professor is talking to take a phone call! That would never have happened in my day at William and Mary. Yet, no one at NECC seemed to complain when they asked us to turn off our cell phones at the beginning of David Weinberger’s talk. We have voice mail; we knew those messages would be waiting when he finished. I guess reading your email or blogging are quiet, individual activities that don’t bother anyone else so why should they be restricted?
