Writing doesn't offer better recall & less personal distractions on a reliable basis. It is extremely dependent upon the individual, and can sometimes even be dependent on the subject; I found Chinese and Japanese (been working my way through East Asian languages) to be subjects where my handwriting was up to the task, while other subjects like biotech I needed to type out what notes I did need if I was to get them down before the professor moved on & if I was going to read it later.
On top of that, I often would be looking up various things in class to supplement the lecture--some of the textbooks I have been assigned are more useful as paperweights or doorstops than they are as, well, textbooks. A few might admittedly have been best if I'd had a properly searchable eBook version, since the problem seemed to be purely poor organization, but for example my physiology textbook was so lousy I used a study guide instead & the ASCII art I used for diagrams in my notes made much more sense than its figures. Then there was my sociology textbook, which...made what I knew very bizarre and potentially offensively wrong statements about minorities/non-Westerners often enough I wasn't sure if anything in it was correct.
Admittedly, I've also heard of professors who are just that boring--though I fortunately never got direct, personal experience--where it'd likely be best for everybody concerned if the class was moved to entirely online, except perhaps for exams, or they were excused from teaching the particular course entirely because even they're bored by it. That also covers the ideal solutions, most likely to result in the greatest good--especially compared to banning laptops.
As somebody else has pointed out about trains, they're a lousy solution over short distances when it comes to efficiency. It also is actually a rather poor solution now, since many rail lines cannot be put back into use and of those which could be, many have survived because nobody wants to go there anyway--a lot of them have been turned into roads. Moreover, building new aboveground tracks would suffer from prohibitive costs, due to the fact that, well, people kinda live there.
Unless, of course, you want to make a lot of people suddenly homeless by exercising eminent domain, which itself has the problem of the state insisting on having the valuation be done by somebody whose paycheck they sign. This might not be a particular problem if they also used the same value they use for calculating your property taxes, except strangely, when they want to buy your land, they discover it's worth extremely less than they've been taxing you for. (That McMansion turns out to have a market value of a plywood shack on the upwind side of the sewage plant. Y'see, it's the plywood shack's reclaimed antique tin roof and utter greenness due to no electricity that makes it worth so much...the plywood shack, I mean. Not the McMansion.)
Surprisingly, nobody thinks to inform the tax office of this quite important discovery in case your property taxes come due before you sell.
Yeah, as much as I like trains, let's not.
Underground tubes--especially if you don't have to dig a large-diameter tunnel--are flat-out less of a logistical nightmare to build, now.
Slashdot Mirror
Writing doesn't offer better recall & less personal distractions on a reliable basis. It is extremely dependent upon the individual, and can sometimes even be dependent on the subject; I found Chinese and Japanese (been working my way through East Asian languages) to be subjects where my handwriting was up to the task, while other subjects like biotech I needed to type out what notes I did need if I was to get them down before the professor moved on & if I was going to read it later.
On top of that, I often would be looking up various things in class to supplement the lecture--some of the textbooks I have been assigned are more useful as paperweights or doorstops than they are as, well, textbooks. A few might admittedly have been best if I'd had a properly searchable eBook version, since the problem seemed to be purely poor organization, but for example my physiology textbook was so lousy I used a study guide instead & the ASCII art I used for diagrams in my notes made much more sense than its figures. Then there was my sociology textbook, which...made what I knew very bizarre and potentially offensively wrong statements about minorities/non-Westerners often enough I wasn't sure if anything in it was correct.
Admittedly, I've also heard of professors who are just that boring--though I fortunately never got direct, personal experience--where it'd likely be best for everybody concerned if the class was moved to entirely online, except perhaps for exams, or they were excused from teaching the particular course entirely because even they're bored by it. That also covers the ideal solutions, most likely to result in the greatest good--especially compared to banning laptops.
As somebody else has pointed out about trains, they're a lousy solution over short distances when it comes to efficiency. It also is actually a rather poor solution now, since many rail lines cannot be put back into use and of those which could be, many have survived because nobody wants to go there anyway--a lot of them have been turned into roads. Moreover, building new aboveground tracks would suffer from prohibitive costs, due to the fact that, well, people kinda live there.
Unless, of course, you want to make a lot of people suddenly homeless by exercising eminent domain, which itself has the problem of the state insisting on having the valuation be done by somebody whose paycheck they sign. This might not be a particular problem if they also used the same value they use for calculating your property taxes, except strangely, when they want to buy your land, they discover it's worth extremely less than they've been taxing you for. (That McMansion turns out to have a market value of a plywood shack on the upwind side of the sewage plant. Y'see, it's the plywood shack's reclaimed antique tin roof and utter greenness due to no electricity that makes it worth so much...the plywood shack, I mean. Not the McMansion.)
Surprisingly, nobody thinks to inform the tax office of this quite important discovery in case your property taxes come due before you sell.
Yeah, as much as I like trains, let's not.
Underground tubes--especially if you don't have to dig a large-diameter tunnel--are flat-out less of a logistical nightmare to build, now.