DRAFT MANUSCRIPT. PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CIRCULATE WITHOUT PERMISSION! Cultivating Interaction Ubiquity at Work

www.carstensorensen.com mobility.lse.ac.uk Abstract: Ubiquitous computing represents the ideal of computational affordances disappearing for our very eyes and merging with our surroundings. Weiser’s (1991) ground-breaking article created a conceptual clearing, which unfortunately has not been sufficiently cultivated over the years. Whilst computers are embedded in a growing proportion of the environment people interact with, this paper argues that focusing on the ubiquity of interaction forms a fruitful focus for bringing the discussion further. There may well be hundreds of millions computerised blenders, toasters and iPods, but with around 3.3 billion mobile phones in use and an increased diversity of mechanisms available for interacting with others, there is a need to consider the diversity technical affordances supporting users in cultivating ubiquity in their interaction. The article focus on interaction in the context of work and suggests distinguishing between embedded technical support for immediate encounters versus ongoing relationships as well as characterising technological assumptions of priority in terms of interaction- symmetry and asymmetry. The resulting four types of embedded support for interaction ubiquity of; connector, filter, mediator and coordinator, are illustrated in use through examples from four case studies of mobile work. It is argued that there is a an interesting duality between the propensity of available connection