So Near Yet So Far.- The Structure of this Book.- Framing the Problem.- Future Directions and Further Information.- 1 Working in the Virtual Office.- 1.1 Introduction.- 1.2 Why Are People Working in Virtual Offices?.- 1.3 Technology for the Virtual Office.- 1.4 Advantages of Working in a Virtual Office.- 1.5 Disadvantages of Working in a Virtual Office.- 1.6 Addressing the Disadvantages of the Virtual Office.- 2 CSCW for the Mobile Teleworker.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 How Telework Concepts Affect Field Based Mobile Workers.- 2.3 How Telework Concepts Affect Intrinsically Mobile Workers.- 2.4 The Basic Technology for Mobile Telework.- 2.5 The Role of CSCW.- 2.6 The Basic Technology of CSCW for Mobile Workers.- 2.7 The Interaction Between CSCW and Telework.- 2.8 Teamworking Across Enterprise Boundaries.- 3 The Electronic Hard Hat: CSCW on the Construction Site.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Review of Past Work.- 3.2.1 Effective Group Working over a Wide Geographical Area.- 3.2.2 Cyclops.- 3.2.3 Electronic Data Interchange.- 3.2.4 The Special Needs of the Construction Industry.- 3.3 Available Technology.- 3.3.1 Video Telephones.- 3.3.2 Wireless LANs.- 3.3.3 Pen Based Computers.- 3.3.4 ISDN.- 3.3.5 Miniature Cameras.- 3.3.6 Head-Up Displays.- 3.4 CSCW on the Construction Site: a Possible Scenario.- 3.5 The Electronic Hard Hat.- 3.5.1 The Totally Independent Hard Hat.- 3.5.2 The Two-part Hard Hat.- 3.5.3 Experience to Date.- 3.5.4 Usability Issues.- 3.6 Future Scenarios.- 3.6.1 Real-Time Project Control.- 3.6.2 Human Centered Construction.- 3.7 Conclusion: A Plea to Communications Companies.- 4 Support for Community Care.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Community Health Services and Community Care Workers.- 4.3 Community Care Systems.- 4.4 The Field Trial of System B.- 4.5 Some Results of the Evaluation Exercise.- 4.6 Comparison with System A.- 4.7 Conclusion.- 5 The' salesman's Promise': CSCW in Sales.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 The Cell Based Factory.- 5.3 Sales Scenarios.- 5.3.1 Scenario 1.- 5.3.2 Scenario 2.- 5.4 Product Advisor.- 5.4.1 Automatic Product/Capacity Match.- 5.4.2 Customer Suggestion.- 5.5 Conclusions.- 6 Observations on Practically Perfect CSCW.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 General Requirements.- 6.2.1 Transparency.- 6.2.2 Consistency.- 6.2.3 Gracefulness.- 6.2.4 Purely Technical Issues.- 6.3 Toward Observational Properties.- 6.3.1 On Formality.- 6.3.2 Why Use Mathematics?.- 6.3.3 User Models.- 6.3.4 Where is the User Model?.- 6.4 Using the Model.- 6.4.1 More on Modeling.- 6.4.2 Observational Properties.- 6.4.3 Task and Observational Property Fit.- 6.5 Toward Practically Perfect CSCW.- 6.5.1 Liveware.- 6.5.2 Problems with Liveware.- 6.6 Conclusions.- Acknowledgements.- 7 Personal Information Management in the Context of Collaborative Work.- 7.1 Introduction.- 7.2 Personal Information Management and the Representational Focus.- 7.3 Time Management: A Case for CSCW?.- 7.4 Personal Information Management and CSCW.- 8 Activity Coordination in Decentralized Working Environments.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Some Aspects of Activity Coordination.- 8.2.1 The Personal Perspective.- 8.2.2 The Group's Collaboration Perspective.- 8.2.3 The Intra-Organizational Perspective.- 8.2.4 The Inter-Organizational Perspective.- 8.3 The Task Manager: An Example for Activity Coordination.- 8.4 Consistency in an Asynchronous Environment.- 8.4.1 Linearizability.- 8.4.2 Transaction Mechanisms.- 8.4.3 Virtual Synchronism.- 8.5 Conflict Handling.- 8.5.1 Automatic Resolution Based on Commutativity.- 8.5.2 Resolution Involving the User.- 8.6 Mobility and Activity Coordination.- 8.7 Summary.- 8.8 Outlook.- 9 Information Requirements of Distributed Workers.- 9.1 Introduction.- 9.2 Background - The Workers and the Technology.- 9.2.1 Mobile Working.- 9.2.2 Teleworking.- 9.2.3 Slow Networks.- 9.3 Principal Topics.- 9.4 Retrieval and Caching.- 9.4.1 Traditional Caching.- 9.4.2 Transparency.- 9.4.3 Caching for Distributed Work.- 9.4.4 Handling Failure.- 9.5 Synchronization.- 9.5.1 Existing Solutions.- 9.5.2 Forms of Update.- 9.5.3 MSC-Concurrency.- 9.5.4 MSC-Distribution.- 9.5.5 Remaining Problems.- 9.6 Other Areas and Future Work.- 9.7 Summary.- 10 Mobile Open Systems Technology for the Utilities Industries.- 10.1 Introduction.- 10.2 Requirements of Mobile Utilities Workers.- 10.2.1 Network Maintenance.- 10.2.2 Related Applications.- 10.2.3 The Need for Integration.- 10.2.4 Application Characteristics.- 10.3 Integration Technologies.- 10.3.1 Open Systems Standards.- 10.3.2 The ANSA Architecture.- 10.4 Mobile Computing Technologies.- 10.4.1 Mobile Computing Technology.- 10.4.2 Local Area Communications Technologies.- 10.4.3 Wide Area Communications Technologies.- 10.4.4 Network Interfaces.- 10.5 The Impact of Mobility on Distributed Systems Platforms.- 10.5.1 Computational Issues.- 10.5.2 Engineering Issues.- 10.6 The MOST Approach.- 10.7 Concluding Remarks.- 11 The Distributed Home Environment and the New Oikos.- 11.1 Introduction.- 11.2 The Oikos Concept.- 11.2.1 The Shape of the New Oikos.- 11.2.2 Activities in the New Oikos.- 11.3 The Distributed Home and Telework.- 11.3.1 The Virtual Distributed Home.- 11.3.2 Telework.- 11.4 The Homelink Project.- 11.5 Future Directions.- 11.6 Summary.- 12 Teaching, Learning and Collaborating at a Virtual Summer School.- 12.1 Introduction.- 12.1.1 Motivation.- 12.1.2 Open University Context.- 12.1.3 This Chapter.- 12.2 Design Issues.- 12.2.1 Pedagogical Goals.- 12.2.2 Practical Design.- 12.2.3 Technical Design.- 12.3 Teaching and Learning at a VSS.- 12.3.1 Timetable.- 12.3.2 Warm-up Period.- 12.3.3 Week One: Language Understanding.- 12.3.4 The Guest Lecture.- 12.3.5 Week Two: Artificial Intelligence.- 12.4 Evaluation and Discussion.- 12.4.1 The Warm-up Period.- 12.4.2 The Language Project Evaluation.- 12.4.3 The Artificial Intelligence Project Evaluation.- 12.4.3 Comparing the Two Projects.- 12.4.5 Overall.- 12.5 Discussion and Conclusions.- Appendix: A Detailed Profile of the VSS Students.- References.- Name Index.