I'm in a University of Ottawa lecture hall because I'm attending BSDCan which is hosted here. There's a power outlet for every single seat, but they're not being heavily used.
This made me think that there's a curve of adoption for computers that goes something like:
- Students don't use laptops (All of recorded history to the 2000's. Maybe the 90's for a richer school.).
- Some students use laptops, people crowd around the few outlets in a room.
- All students use laptops: something must be done. Hundreds of additional outlets are installed in lecture halls.
- Laptop power technology improves: you can make it through multiple lectures without a charge.
- Laptop power technology improves further: I often don't bring a charger when leaving the house- I'll easily get one day of light use.
- We still have a bunch of outlets.
This is related to what I wrote before about on 2023-06-08 (almost exactly a year ago- maybe it's my time of year to think about obsolescence). I wrote about business centres and their rise and fall. You still see Ethernet jacks. I just went through and made sure that my wife's office building has at least one functioning network port in every room but ... will anyone use them? In a place with sufficiently good quality wi-fi?