Fewer and fewer, especially for jobs that require a college education.
It’s not necessarily the employer that doesn’t have wife, but the building. I worked for the government in different buildings, very poor wifi or none at all. I’ve worked in buildings that were big cinder blocks. Bad reception. Several recent jobs have no wifi, and we are given outlines to perform the work. You can take notes on the outlines but then have to turn in all the papers to be shredded at the end of the assignment. For one client, we weren’t allowed to have cell phones or tablets in the work room. It was a security issue.
I worked with a guy whose handwriting was so awful you couldn’t make out the simplest of notes from him. He couldn’t write down a phone number that you could read. That was okay because we all had secretaries in those days, but now many offices don’t have support staff.
I don’t think anyone under 21 has much problem using technology today. At all. They certainly don’t need much help in that regard. Whether most preteens and teens have the maturity to use it responsibly in a school setting is another matter and I do think it is helpful for secondary schools to save them from the consequences of their immaturity in this area. Several years ago, after our school joined the tech tide, I conducted a poll of students: Asking “other than themselves, what percent of their classmates were using the tech for academic (vs improper) purposes during the school day”. The answers ranged from 5 to 15 percent of the population. It was illuminating.
Instead of putting laptop users in the front or the back, why not divide the room in half and put users on one side and non-users on the other? Then you can decide for yourself whether to sit in the front or the back, lecturers refrain from singling out students, and others can be seated free from distractions.
It depends on how the room is set up and how many students are in the class. If there are 5 typers and 15 notetakers, I think the teacher would tend to ignore the 5 typers if they were off to one side. If there are 200 in a lecture hall, easier to split.
If I were a professor, I think I’d ban laptops (and PHONES) except for those with accommodations. I just wouldn’t want to be lecturing to a bunch of students with their heads down, fingers clicking. I multitask all the time but the one combo I can’t seem to master is talking while typing or writing. It takes me a few seconds to finish my thoughts on a keyboard, and I go back to correct things, and lose the discussion for a few seconds. When writing, I can stop immediately and answer a question.