They’re Working on Their Own, Just Side by Side

Conversation with my friend Laura Forlano, who recently graduated from Columbia University (Bravo Doctor!). Laura presented her work at the AOIR2008 conference, and attended EPIC2008.

Laura Forlano is a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and holds a PhD in Communications at Columbia University. As an adjunct faculty member, she teaches Design in Everyday Experience, Design and Management, and Sustainable Design in the Design and Management department at Parsons the New School for Design. Forlano serves as a board member of NYCwireless, a non-profit organization that promotes the deployment of free, public WiFi networks, and the New York City Computer Human Interaction Association (NYCCHI). In her receiver contribution, Forlano shares some of the key findings of her research into the communities that form around WiFi hotspots and the emerging mobile work practices of “Generation Mesh”.

Laura studied the new work culture, people that go work at Starbuck to be with surrounded with people… She published a short article in the Vodafone Receiver, Generation Mesh:

The phrase “anytime, anywhere” – grabbed from the pages of magazine advertisements for software and mobile phones – has come to signify both freedom and mobility and, at the same time, the need to be constantly tethered to a mobile phone or wireless device. But, “anytime, anywhere” is the lingua franca of a homogeneous, globalized “space of flows” rather than a meaningful “space of place” as Spanish urban planner Manuel Castells has theorized.

Dan Fost quoted her February 20, 2008 in the NYTimes :) Read the article: They’re Working on their Own, Just Side by Side:

“Even people who are antisocial feel a need to be around other people for at least part of the day while they’re working,” said Laura Forlano, a visiting fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School who has studied people working in communal offices and cafes.