TECHNOLOGY journalists have lately been suffering from a corporate obsession
with nondisclosure agreements. High-tech companies are hot to publicise their
bright ideas—but they don’t want anyone to tell the world exactly what it
is they are.
So an editor invited to a press briefing on a new product is likely to be
told to sign a nondisclosure agreement. It happened to Jeffrey Bairstow as
editorial director of the trade magazine Laser Focus World, which
specialises in optoelectronics. Understandably, he refused to sign, recognising
the situation as the height—or depths—of absurdity.
MEANWHILE, it has become routine for…
