Now we’ve got used to using laptops at business meetings haven’t we? I mean it would seem odd to attend a meeting without one, particularly as we use them to organize everything about our lives.
We take notes, check dates, update our status on Facebook, twitter some information, keep up with news, check our emails and so and so on.
Newburyport City Council doesn’t seem to understand this judging by their decision to ban laptops at council meetings according to press reports. Oh not their own laptops of course, the ban is only in place for members of the public attending the meetings.
Now mobile phones I can kind of understand, they could ring at an inappropriate moment, in fact they invariably do, and we’re well used to being banned from using our mobiles in certain public meetings, we go outside if we have to, but what is so offensive about our humble laptop?
Apparently one councillor said the ban was put in place to stop people from Twittering during the meetings. Ok, but why shouldn’t they Twitter? I don’t see the problem with that at all.
It has also been suggested that maybe the council didn’t want to go to the bother of making a difference between a laptop, a netbook and a mobile phone or anything else so blanket banned them all.
Now I know that the boundaries are blurring between mobiles and netbooks and other hand held devices but to state outright that laptops are banned is possibly taking this foggy area a bit too far.
It has also been suggested that the councillor’s themselves found it difficult to concentrate with all the clattering of keyboards. With all due respect, if this was the case then surely the councillors would be banned from using laptops too?
It also means that bloggers in attendance at the meetings can’t blog whereas the councillor’s themselves can twitter away to their heart’s content.
The strange thing is that the council are not trying to thwart the release of information or stifle free speech in any way at all so that’s not the real reason, their meetings are even broadcast on the TV and on the Internet.
One thing is certain though, their decision to ban laptops is gaining a lot of attention and for all the wrong reasons too so perhaps at their next meeting the ban will be revoked. Here’s hoping.
