Fluid Interaction in Mobile Work Practices

Our recent history has seen an upsurge in Information and Communication Technologies(ICT) supporting the mobilisation of computer-mediated interaction in general and during thepast decade the mobilisation of organisational actors in particular. The ongoing mutualadaptation of work practices and such mobile and wireless technologies has both resulted innew work and technology practices and in the need for re-appreciating the perception of thesepractices. Everyday working life is increasingly constituted of a heterogeneous melangewhere people, work objects and symbols as well as their interactions are distributed in time,space and across contexts. When we then consider interaction where participants, work, andinteractional objects are mobile, the challenges of supporting the fluidity of interaction incollocated settings are immense. Many years of research and commercial efforts has sought toestablish technological means by which interaction can be conducted with the same ease, or inthe same fluid manner as collocated interaction. However, as argued by Olson and Olson(2000), distance does matter.This paper addresses one particular aspect of organisational life for mobile workers, theconstant negotiation of fluid work, based on the assumption that an essential aspect of mobilework is the negotiation of desirable versus disruptive interaction. We here take a closer lookat mobile interaction in the locus of the individual meeting the others. The purpose of thepaper is to initiate a broader discussion of fluid mobile work by drawing upon socialtopology, the study of ICT use in organisations, as well as experimental research constructingand testing innovative interaction management technologies. In order to initiate the debate weask the question:

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