Christine Salazar Department ofln3~rmationand ComputerScience University of Cali~rnia, Irvine csalazar@ics,uci.edu Technology as Enabler: Keeping Work Distinct from Home while Working at Home omputers and communications technologies are allow ing more and more people to work at home. Many workers desire to work at home. Companies allow workers to do so in order to reduce overhead and promote worker satisfaction as well as to comply with government traffic reduction plans. But imagine the following scenario: a worker sits at a desk in the living room talking on the phone to a client. The canary is chirping in the background. The employee is working at home but the home environment is ever present. So how can technology create boundaries and links between home and work to enable work to be done in the home? C Background 7~lecommuting The term telecommuting was first used by Jack Nilles in 1976 (Niles, et. al.) and can be defined as working at a distance using telecommunications technology. There are three kinds of distance work. Generally what most people mean by telecommuting is working at home, either full time or part time in place of working at the office. Distance work can also include working
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