It’s with great amusement that I came across ReadWriteWeb’s story on a “technology in the workplace” survey [PDF link], which provided some entertaining Friday afternoon reading.

According to the survey, “Two-thirds of all Boomers agree that Personal Digital Assistants (like the Blackberry, for example) and mobile phones contribute to a decline in proper workplace etiquette, and believe the use of a laptop during in-person meetings is “distracting,” less than half of Gen Y workers agree.”

They must find me awfully rude in meetings for typing my notes up as we go and occasionally browsing to websites as supporting evidence during brainstorming sessions!

[Note: Boomers and Gen Y is a nasty generalisation of either generation as it's a question of mentality rather than physical age, but let's go with it for the purpose of this...]

Joking aside, I do think that Gen Y, otherwise known as the Continuous Partial Attention or Nintendo generation in my mind, could occasionally benefit (speaking from experience) from putting the gadgets away and having good ol’ paper & pen brainstorming sessions. There’s something organic and satisfying about picking up a pile of scribbled notes at the end of the session, isn’t there?

However, on a day to day basis, I don’t personally see anything wrong with choosing to use a tool that makes us more productive in a meeting. Over the years, I’m afraid I’ve become utterly incapable of writing by hand and always prefer to type notes, so I’d be one to support their use.

Whether it’s a mobile, a laptop or any other tool, what I understand of this research is that the older generation folks who responded to this survey expect the technology to be a hurdle, while the younger generation views it as an extension of themselves (a faster way to write, a secondary “memory” for facts in the form of Wikipedia, a way to confirm a gut feel by searching for other people’s views on a given topic, etc). Assuming tools become easier to use and less hurdle-like, will they be better received in the meeting room?

Am I completely wrong on this one or do others want to chime in?

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