Designing Ubiquitous Information Environments: Socio-Technical Issues and Challenges

Ubiquitous computing as the next wave of organizational computing offers new possibilities for organizations to improve their productivity and effectiveness. However, the emergence of ubiquitous information environments fundamentally challenges many traditional assumptions about organizations, management, computing, communication and work. The book brings in diverse perspectives from computer-supported collaborative work, institutional perspective, diffusion of innovation, management, sociology, individual cognition, and software engineering. It also covers a variety of technologies that make up ubiquitous information environments including RFID, wireless grid, GPS, mobile phones, and wireless local area network. The papers cover many contexts of ubiquitous computing, attesting to the wide-ranging potential of ubiquitous information environments. A collective product of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 8.2, the book proceeds from the IFIP Working Conference on the Design of Ubiquitous Information Environments held in Cleveland, Ohio in August 2005.