Here and there, now and then

Abstract

For the last eight years I've worked as a long-distance teleworker from my home in Minneapolis, first for Apple Computer in California, and then for IBM in New York. In this essay I offer reflections on the nature of my workplace(s), in the hope that they may provide grist for those concerned with providing technological and organizational support for remote workers.Obviously this is a highly personal and particular account. Nevertheless, I believe that such reflections on personal experience have an important role to play in informing the ways in which the meaning of 'the workplace' is changing under the impact of new technologies. As such, this essay fits into a tradition of examinations of ways in which particular workplaces are shaped by technologies, ranging from a wide variety of studies carried out in the ethnographic tradition (e.g. [8, 9]) to more personal, reflective accounts (e.g. [1, 3]).In this essay, I work from the macro level to the micro level. I begin with the organization for which I work, and take up the complexities which emerge when I try to answer the question "Where do you work?" While one might think that at least saying where one works is a relatively simple matter, I suggest that this isn't so. Next I focus on group workplaces. In particular, I look at the meeting room, and describe an unusual experience attending a meeting via speaker phone. On the basis of this example, I suggest that while places are obviously important, something that is also important --- and much more difficult to support --- is the way in which collective interaction changes over time within a workplace. Third, I focus in on my personal workplace in my home office. I note that much of my daily activity can be viewed as movement through a trajectory of places, each which provides a different configuration of resources for collective interaction. I conclude with a discussion of my personal experiences with Loops, an online environment under development by my work group, that blends elements of group and personal workplaces.