Dealing with mobility: Understanding access anytime, anywhere

The rapid and accelerating move towards the adoption and use of mobile technologies has increasingly provided people and organisations with the ability to work away from the office and on the move. The new ways of working afforded by these technologies are often characterised in terms of access to information and people ‘anytime, anywhere’. This paper presents a study of mobile workers that highlights different facets of access to remote people and information, and different facets of anytime, anywhere. Four key factors in mobile work are identified from the study: the role of planning, working in ‘dead time’, accessing remote technological and informational resources, and monitoring the activities of remote colleagues. By reflecting on these issues, we can better understand the role of technology and artefact use in mobile work and identify the opportunities for the development of appropriate technological solutions to support mobile workers

Developing Mobile Information Systems: Managing Additional Aspects

Despite the numerous stories in academic journals and the business press of systems that fail to deliver anticipated benefits, mobile information systems (IS) are still gaining ground. The nature of mobile IS introduces additional aspects that require attention during the development process, compared to more traditional information systems built for stationary computers. The underlying assumption in this paper is that successful management of these aspects is crucial in order to harness the possibilities of mobility. This paper presents the AUDE- (Application, User, Device, Environment) framework; an analytical framework that addresses the additional aspect of mobile IS. The framework integrates previous research on mobile IS and is tested retrospectively on a case with mobile service technicians. Of the 19 attributes covered by the AUDE framework 2 attributes were not applicable in the investigated case. Of the remaining 17 attributes only 6 were actively handled (3 of them only partly), 8 were not taken into account, and for 3 we were not able to retrieve data. With the ignorance of specific attributes for mobile IS development it was possible to explain why the developed IS did not meet expectations and was considered a failure by its users

The Continuum Architecture: Towards Enabling Chaotic Ubiquitous Computing

Interactions in the style of the ubiquitous computing paradigm are possible today, but only in handcrafted environments within one administrative and technological realm. This thesis describes an architecture (called Continuum), a design that realises the architecture, and a proof-of-concept implementation that brings ubiquitous computing to chaotic environments. Essentially, Continuum enables an ecology at the edge of the network, between users, competing service providers from overlapping administrative domains, competing internet service providers, content providers, and software developers that want to add value to the user experience. Continuum makes the ubiquitous computing functionality orthogonal to other application logic. Existing web applications are augmented for ubiquitous computing with functionality that is dynamically compiled and injected by a middleware proxy into the web pages requested by a web browser at the user?s mobile device. This enables adaptability to environment variability, manageability without user involvement, and expansibility without changes to the mobile. The middleware manipulates self-contained software units with precise functionality (called frames), which help the user interact with contextual services in conjunction with the data to which they are attached. The middleware and frame design explicitly incorporates the possibility of discrepancies between the assumptions of ubiquitous-computing software developers and field realities: multiple administrative domains, unavailable service, unavailable software, and missing contextual information. A framework for discovery and authorisation addresses the chaos inherent to the paradigm through the notion of role assertions acquired dynamically by the user. Each assertion represents service access credentials and contains bootstrapping points for service discovery on behalf of the holding user. A proof-of-concept prototype validates the design, and implements several frames that demonstrate general functionality, including driving discovery queries over multiple service discovery protocols and making equivalences between service types, across discovery protocols

The Being in some body: An Autoethnographic Account of Being and Becoming-in-the-world with Multiple Sclerosis

Embodiment and experience as a nurse, wife, mother, researcher, and educator living and working with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the focus of this study. MS is a chronic de-generative neurological illness. It was confirmed in my being in 1998. Through my chosen approach of autoethnography as method, and on the basis of my work into and on my ‘self’ and ‘being’, I invite a radical review of the professional organization and medical(ised) treatment of those with MS and with similar chronic conditions. My aims are to generate research that goes beyond the passive construal of the body typical of medical research to a process through which embodiment can be understood not only as representation of the body but as a significant influencer of a semblance of actuality or verisimilitude. In this work I place my experience in conversation with scholarly voices critiquing embodied experiences of self and being in the world as heuristic inquiry. The intertwining relationships between self, body, and work as mutual organisational relationships are examined through the development of a self-reflexive praxis, in which embodiment, experience, and meaning-making resonate through autoethnography as both topic of study and constituent of the research experience. By drawing on first person narrative accounts of my experiences since the confirmed diagnosis of MS, I make visible some of the seemingly invisible effects of living and working with this degenerative illness. I chronicle and analyse my engagement with a profession whose calling is to care for those, who like me, live with chronic health conditions that may periodically present as acute or increasingly debilitating experiences. My voice is clearly present in this text, bestowing an authorial voice from my body to re-view, re-veal, re-tell highly personal accounts specifically focusing on how I, the researcher as writer, have explored the impacts of a confirmed diagnosis of MS on my life and the lives of those I care about. Through this research, I have explored and enhanced an integrated sense of self deeply affected by the often-prevailing medicalised change in my identity as I Carrie, who has MS. I challenge the separation of mind/body, of conscious/unconscious, of emotion/cognition, and of conceptual/actual as typical and still dominant in medical specialist approaches to meaning making. I also question the institutionalised forms of professionalism that sees the medical encounter as a supreme example of surveillance: the doctor questions and investigates - the patient is the passive object. I propose that meaning resides in embodied experience. I tell of my experiences that seem pertinent to the creation of my best possible life with MS. Yet these experiences seem undervalued or even absent from my diagnosis and treatment in various aspects of the ‘helping role’ and of ‘professional care’ I was able to access: I was now being viewed as a disabled person. No abled-bodied person would tolerate this! I wanted to have some control and rights over my changed life. The best way forward was to merge my old and now new ways of being to regain some control and dignity. (Personal Journal, 1998). In this research, I focus on everyday performances by stepping consciously and creatively onto the stage as a life-long member of MS. I tell of how, initially from frustration with the medical professionals but increasingly from a source of creative self-direction, I explore the transformation of my body through the performance of reconstructing illness. As a consequence of my attention to embodied change, I do not view my perceived physical, psychological, spiritual, artistic, and thus ‘social’ worlds merely as discrete categories of experience commonly isolated by empiricists. It appears to me that this attention I give myself is restoring and empowering this fully alert and engaged ‘Carrie who flourishes’ - even with MS. The research approach brings personal experience, reflections, and insights to the fore as heuristic inquiry to join a growing genre of research that embraces subjective matter: the lived experience of research and the insight of living research as inquiry. This inquiry contributes to modes of research that are intentionally transformational. I contribute to the development of research methods, research voicing, and ways of writing qualitative research. I connect my research on, from, and with self to the disciplines of organisational learning, management, and teaching. My study has implications for those who like me host MS or similar chronic conditions and for the supporting families, volunteers and communities. In particular, this research has implications for those professionals who provide a diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and care for those who must live with a chronic condition of any kind. I hope it encourages all people entwined in such stories as mine, to seek life-enhancing communication as the primary responsibility of care for each other

They opened the door too late : African Americans and baseball, 1900-1947

During Jim Crow, the sport of baseball served as an important arena for African American resistance and negotiation. as a (mostly) black enterprise, the Negro Leagues functioned as part of a larger African American movement to establish black commercial ventures during segregation. Moreover, baseball\u27s special status as the national pastime made it a significant public symbol for African American campaigns for integration and civil rights.;This dissertation attempts to interrogate the experience and significance of black baseball during Jim Crow during the first half of the twentieth century. Relying on newspapers, magazines, memoirs, biographies, and previously published oral interviews, this work looks at resistance and political critique that existed in the world of black sport, particularly in the cultural production of black baseball.;Specifically, this dissertation argues that in a number of public and semi-public arenas, African Americans used baseball as a literal and figurative space in which they could express dissatisfaction with the strictures of Jim Crow as well as the larger societal understanding of race during the early twentieth century. African Americans asserted a counter-narrative of black racial equality and superiority through their use of physical space in ballparks and on the road during travel, through the public negotiation of black manhood on the pages of the black press, through the editorial art and photography of black periodicals, and through the employment of folktales and nicknames.;The African American experience during Jim Crow baseball and the attendant social and cultural production provide a window into the subtle and unstated black resistance to white supremacy and scientific racism. Thus this dissertation explores and identifies the political meanings of black baseball

Inspiring the Next Generation: Student Experiments and Educational Activities on the International Space Station, 2000-2006

One important objective of NASA has always been to inspire the next generation. NASA and human space flight have a unique ability to capture the imaginations of both students and teachers. The presence of humans onboard the International Space Station (ISS) for more than five years now has provided a foundation for numerous educational activities aimed at capturing the interest and motivating study in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Yet even before the Expedition 1 crew arrived at station in November 2000, experiments with student participation were being conducted onboard ISS in support of NASA missions. One of NASA's protein crystal growth experiments had been delivered to station by the shuttle Atlantis during STS-106 in September 2000 and was returned to Earth six weeks later aboard the shuttle Discovery during the STS-92 mission. From very early on it was recognized that students would have a strong interest in the ISS, and that this would provide a unique opportunity for them to get involved and participate in science and engineering projects on ISS. It should be noted that participation is not limited to U.S. students but involves the 16 International Partner countries and various other countries under special commercial agre