Article in the Economist, Home Truth About Telecoms. Technology and Society: Anthropologists investigate the use of communications technology and reach some surprising conclusions:

Of course, improvements to mobile networks and the spread of third-generation (3G) and Wi-Fi networks mean that you no longer need to be at your desk to get things done. But Ms Broadbent found that there is not, in fact, much appetite for working while on the move. Indeed, she calls this “the hypermobility myth”. After studying workers who spend more than half their time out of the office—salesmen, consultants, pilots, journalists and photographers—she found that they generally stick to communications while on the move, gathering information that they then work on when they get back to their desks. Hotel rooms and airports are, she says, “not seen as an appropriate environment for substantive work” and are mainly used for e-mail.