@unimagine On the one hand this is stupid because being on your phone or computer doesnt mean you arent paying attention.
On the other hand if it pisses off politicians and gets them in trouble for stupid shit maybe it will get them to hate facial recognition and start taking it seriously... so maybe its stupid in the most brilliant of ways...
Many people can not pay attention to many things at onc. I have no doubt **some** people you see on their phone wont recall what you are saying. Others on the other hand have better mental faculties and can do one thing on their phone while completely paying attention to everything you say.
I find it absolutely infuriating and silly when someone assumes **everyone** is incapable of effectively multitasking without reduced attention. I have absolutely no problem doing multiple things at once with no impact on my retention, why should I be penalizaed for someone elses poor mental skills.
These people may be distracted, they may not. I personally dont know anything about their mental abilities. Assuming we hired smart people (a big if I know) for our politicians then they should be more than capable to review their phone and follow along at the same time.
Also not ewe have no clue what they are doing on their phone, they may very well be looking up information relative to the conversation (like the definition of a word or pulling up a world map).
I think depends a lot on the company. As I mentioned I was at one company in particular where my habbit of typing on my laptop was common during meetings and people commented it was unacceptable (which I thought was quite idiotic). But that is the only time I had that reaction and it was a mega-corp.
Every other company I had been at, many of which were startups, no one ever commented at it. This may be simply because I was at the top of the food chain, so as the "boss" people felt i proved my abilities enough (or were just unwilling to confront me)... I still usually had someone above me, mind you, who could have said something.
So yea in my expiernce whether it is "acceptable" or not seems to depend simply on how stiff of a rod the management has up their ass combined with how highly ranked your position is that might suggest you can self-govern.