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The Secret Engineer
Our obsession with mobile devices is stifling creative discourse and destroying the art of conversation. The Secret Engineer has a solution.
Squashing the Blackberry
Something has changed over the past few years here at Amalgamated Products Limited and it is not a change for the good.
Once upon a time meetings were only interrupted by an occasional phone call (“no – I must take this because I really am so terribly important”) or the gentle snoring of the Work Package Manager sat in the corner.
Now as matters of great import are discussed there will be the persistent tapping of people composing e-mails, skyping and getting their personal best score on Mario-Super-Hedgehog for all I know - sounding like a plague of Death Watch Beetles in a table-tennis bat factory. In fact I sometimes get the impression that people try to get invited to meetings just so that they have the opportunity to catch up with their correspondence uninterrupted. Not only is it intensely irritating but I put it to you, my friends, that it is also counterproductive.
whenever there’s a meeting you can barely see the table for the damned things
On the one hand people are at least seen to be “multi tasking” and making the most of their waking hours between, given their rabid eagerness to please, the presumably tedious periods of whatever passes for life outside of work. An aura of committed professionalism is pervaded, 110% given to the cause of ramping up the profits for the share holders by not wasting a millisecond on anything other than visible activity; time wasted on “thinking” for instance.
Mobile devices are a distraction in meetings
I can see how it started; some top bod will have got out his Kumquat, Eye-Telephone or laptop and smugly displayed his superiority and importance by flaunting it in front of the assembled acolytes. Of course they would have clamoured to follow his every move, this will then have dripped down through the hierarchy and now whenever there’s a meeting you can barely see the table for the damned things.
However, this leaves me sat toying with my pencil whilst listening to the topic of the day and wondering what the purpose of a meeting actually is? E-mail alone can disseminate information, allow for discussion and enable decision making. Surely then, the sole advantage of a meeting is that the dynamic allows for the cross fertilisation of ideas – the spark of invention and innovation that can only be struck though lively conversation and immediate debate?
As if this weren’t cause enough to ban the shiny electronic gee-gaws I have also witnessed various attendees looking up in open-mouthed incomprehension like some idiot child when asked a question, oblivious to what was being said as they were lost in the ethereal traffic of the interweb. By self-inflicted exclusion the multi-taskers remove themselves from the group activity and stop the meeting from being as effective as it should be.
You will no doubt be pleased to hear that I’m currently planning on slipping a claw hammer into my next meeting as a subtle counter-measure to such devices – all for the good of the company of course.
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Readers' comments (14)
Brain m | 20 Jul 2012 12:47 pm
The problem is with the person running the meeting - the rule should be no use of mobile phones, texting etc. The only electronic gadgetry should be related to the meeting. If its felt this shouldn't be the case then why bother wasting everyone's time with the meeting in the first place!
Bottom line it's just plain rude......
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Philip Whitting | 20 Jul 2012 12:48 pm
Well observed Mr Secret Engineer - I suspect a lot of people reading this will have been on both sides of the fence; i.e. they will have been infuriated/dismayed/distracted by the tapping of i-thingies during their presentation, and have at some stage in their career been doing the tapping themselves. A sign of the times that I saw on TV recently was a lecturer delivering his lesson to a group of teenage students, who were all looking intently at his PowerPoint screen while touch-typing their notes into their laptops. How I wish I could do that!
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Anonymous | 20 Jul 2012 1:05 pm
I recently was contracted to a company where the rule was, no chairs or tea and biscuits in meetings, and if your mobile phone rang during the meeting, you were immediately excluded and sent out like a naughty schoolchild! Result, very short, but constructive meetings, without interruptions from outside calls (after the first few meetings!) Even the MD was caught out when his mobile was left on, he excluded himself! That seemed to work.
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Keith Deakin | 20 Jul 2012 1:29 pm
....annoying and rude! No doubt, too, that the 'meeting minutes' will be published from a phone using 40 characters or less. grrrr.
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Andrew Fallows | 20 Jul 2012 2:01 pm
I couldn't agree more.
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Trevor Best | 20 Jul 2012 3:18 pm
We have all been conned!! Conned into accepting that the mobile is an essential part of life's activities. No it isn't!! The con was the start up of the revolution in communication when mobiles were the exclusive equipment for the "Yuppies", remember them? With their hand sets as big as a house brick they perambulated down the road telling everyone how important they were. Of course they would have received the message when they got to the office or home so nothing was lost. Nothing has changed the idiots still answer the phone and tell the caller "I am on the train!" in a loud voice to tell people how important etc.
Actually the mobile phone and all the other electronic bits are the result of brilliant marketing. No one really needs them but while they have it in their hands they may just as well have a look to see who has been calling and a habit is born. The second part of the con is the cost. The prices of the calls and services are afforded only because they are paid monthly and therefore become a non-spend which is part of the budget just as the electricity and gas bills. Small enough not to be a burden. However, if you multiply £17.00 by 12 for a years supply you get £204.00 which is paid to "keep in touch". The ultimate problem is what happens when the lights go out and we have become totally reliant on this form of communication??
I am a dinosaur and refuse to be drawn into this web. I have a mobile phone and 3 years ago I prepaid £15.00 to start and today, in July 2012, I still have £6.30 left on it and I run a small business without it.
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Ray Edwards | 20 Jul 2012 3:21 pm
Luddites get over its progress you sound like my grandfather and great grandfather.
Yes it’s at rude meetings and in company but better communicating than sat mindless in front of a television.
Progress can be painful but that’s what drives the human race forward, sometimes good sometimes bad.
Ray Edwards
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Mark Gilbert | 20 Jul 2012 4:16 pm
They are not being Luddites. Texting, emailing and instant messaging while in a meeting is counterproductive, you can't concentrate on two things at the same moment. Therefore you can't make a worthwhile contribution to the dscussion. I went to a meeting where I was the only one without a laptop (as an engineer I don't qualify). Within minutes the discussion had dwindled away as everyone else tapped away at their keyboards. Nobody noticed when a few minutes later I got up and left.
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Trevor Best | 21 Jul 2012 11:07 am
Exactly my point, Mark. We have been persuaded by supreme marketing to need to know what happened to our last email, text, Tweet, or whatever programme is used. How can anyone complain that their privacy has been eroded through Tweet and STILL use the thing, as we see regularly in the press. And we are still waiting to hear the full story of mobile phone hacking. I stand outside all of this nonsense looking in and wonder. Our behaviour patterns are being changed dramatically and willingly and it has to be a concern. A few weeks ago I followed a man who was walking into a crowded Waterloo Station and he was reading pages from a book on his Ipad or Kindle! No one used to walk and read a book at the same time in a crowded area. Future generations will continue to develop and use this form of social media to the good or ill of civilization as a whole.
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Anonymous | 21 Jul 2012 12:50 pm
I'm typing this on a smartphone in a cafe with free wi-fi on my weekend. As for meetings, I have been on both sides. My opinion is: If the topic of discussion doesn't command your full attention then why not spend that time productively, but ask yourself - why be in the meeting at all if your presence is so immaterial?
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