The Relevance of Social Issues in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Social issues include individual, group, and organizational behaviors that are affected by ubiquitous computing. Our discussion of these issues is prompted by the following questions. What if technology was literally untethered by any physical connection to a network, to a workspace, or to an organization? What new ways to communicate, collaborate, coordinate, organize, and manage would we see? Answers to these questions invite fresh approaches to studying the social consequences of technologies. Ubiquitous computing technologies not only enable new ways of acting and interacting, but also stimulate fundamental reassessments of the meaning of human action and interaction. In some cases, social actions will occur in entirely new ways, and in other cases completely new social actions will appear.