ALEXANDER NEMEROV'S primary concerns as he teaches his winter-term art-history survey course for Yale University's undergraduates, covering the Renaissance to present, are that the images of works he discusses are clearly visible in a darkened room, and that he brings sufficient energy and attention to make each oration fresh and unique. The audience did not always seem to appreciate the effort, however. From their vantage point at the back of the room Dr Nemerov's teaching assistants reported that a good quarter of scholars would tap away at phones and laptops.

Yet he does not think trotting out a list of prohibitions is the best way to begin a class. So he took the seemingly remarkable step this term of selecting an auditorium that holds fewer students than the typical venue in part because it lacked Wi-Fi service. The Yale Daily Newsfirst reported this story to explain why only 270 students would be allowed in the course, which has been popular for decades, even though over 500 were "shopping" it, Yale-speak for auditing the first few days.

Dr Nemerov recalls that he first set his sights on the college's art-gallery auditorium because it may be kept darker than the law-school hall in which the class is often taught. But when he discovered that it is a rare zone without wireless networking, and that mobile-phone service is also poor to none, he needed no further convincing.

The good professor is no Luddite. He realises that a request to turn off the hall's Wi-Fi routers during a class may meddle with other nearby needs. (And it would in any case be useless in blocking mobile 3G and 4G signals.) Some students, he concedes, clearly use the internet to enhance his lectures, looking up artwork he discusses to get a closer or different view, or taking notes. But some engage in less pertinent online activities. Dr Nemerov debated with himself whether to note the signal blockage in his course syllabus but ultimately decided to leave students to discover this for themselves.

When, years ago, your correspondent took much the same course at Yale, then taught by Vincent Scully, after whom Dr Nemerov's chair is named, there was no doubt about what was expected of participants. Dr Scully was a lovely man who thrived on teaching undergrads. But he was clearly of the old school. Babbage vividly recalls him berating two women in the front row for talking (inaudibly to your correspondent's ears). Listeners were expected to sit in the dark, take notes and pay attention. It was effective: twenty five years later Babbage still remembers Dr Scully's comments on holding a prehistoric Venus figurine in his hand and the significance of aspects of the Parthenon's design and friezes.

Dr Nemerov is old enough, just a few years senior of this Babbage, to recall classrooms in which computing devices were the preserve of computer-science labs. His view of a class may appear similarly prehistoric to today's student body. A lecture occurs once, in one place at one time, he says, even if similar words are uttered on other occasions. His students, even his best, assure him that they may multitask efficiently, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary from their personal lives and grades.

The auditorium represents a rare lacuna, and not just on college campuses. The world is increasingly blanketed with all manner of wireless networks. Between mobile and Wi-Fi, one is hard pressed to find an absence of signal, whether in flight over America, around Mount Everest or in artists' colonies that are otherwise dedicated to providing a respite to creators from the relentless barrage of bits.

Dr Nemerov has no illusions. The gale winds of wireless will soon sweep across the lecture hall, especially now that its electromagnetic drought has been highlighted. But he remains concerned about the nature of attentiveness, and the lecture's role in the future of education. How long will it be, he wonders, before students become so stingy with the precious commodity of attention that they are unable to sit through a 60-minute block? "Lecturing is a difficult and even strange art," Dr Nemerov muses. He must be hoping it won't be consigned to art-history books.