I am currently reading Peter F. Hamilton’s work and in his Commonwealth universe, each person has a connection to the unisphere, a future version of the internet but connected directly to your brain.
Until such thing is possible, we have to lose concentration on our environment to access the wonders of the worldwide network. Danah Boyd writes about how she prefers to use digital backchannels during presentations.
My colleagues interrupt the talk with questions. (One admits that he asks questions because he’s more interested in talking to the speaker than listening… he also asks questions to stay awake.) I find the interruptions to the speaker to be weirdly inappropriate. I much much prefer to ask questions to Twitter, Wikipedia, and IRC/IM. Let the speaker do her/his thing… let me talk with the audience who is present and those who are not but might have thoughtful feedback. When I’m inspired, I ask questions. When I’m not, I zone out, computer or not.
Being even younger than her and lacking the older traditions, I actually prefer to have a conversation with the speaker, than commenting with the rest of the audience via twitter/wtv. It will only work with small audiences of course, but if that speaker was invited to talk, it’s because he knows (or should know) about the subject, and I want to learn from him not only the contents of his talk, but how that contents should fit my purposes.
There’s no doubt that I barely understood what the speaker was talking about. But during the talk, I had looked up six different concepts he had introduced (thank you Wikipedia), scanned two of the speakers’ papers to try to grok what on earth he was talking about, and used Babelfish to translate the Italian conversations taking place on Twitter and FriendFeed in attempt to understand what was being said. Of course, I had also looked up half the people in the room (including the condescending man next to me) and posted a tweet of my own.
Sure there are a lot of interest things to dig into, but I usually check the bio before the talk, and the “related links” after, and email the speaker if I need to (have done it a few times). Sure there are some immediate online checks you have to do, but they are rare.
Of course I believe having a computer (or any other online-device) is a bonus in any presentation, specially if it’s a class with a boring teacher (or a boring business or marketoid if that fits you).