Work/place: mobile technologies and arenas of activity

Wireless, portable communication devices continue to promise newer and better ways of being constantly available and in touch with information and with other people. In tandem with developments in wireless, mobile access, dreams of refashioning the world of work are woven: if we are to believe the rhetoric, work activities and communications can now take place anytime, anywhere. In this short paper, we raise a number of issues that have been appearing in common discourses of the impact of wireless technologies on the world of work, and consider the relationship of these discourses to ideas of the design of the workplace. Further, we present a summary of papers that appear in this special issue. As the papers were initially presented at a workshop held at ECSCW in Bonn in September of 2001, we present in addition an overview of the comments and discussions that took place at the workshop.