As laptops have kept improving, and Wi-Fi has continued to reach ever further into the crevices of American life, however, the reality of laptops’ potential stopped looking quite so rosy. Instead of liberating white-collar and “knowledge” workers from their office, laptops turned many people’s whole life into an office. Smartphones might require you to read an after-hours email or check in on the office-communication platform Slack before you started your commute, but portable computers gave workers 24-hour access to the sophisticated, expensive applications—Salesforce CRM, Oracle ERP, Adobe Photoshop—that made their full range of duties possible.
Though not the focus of her piece, she does also touch on how laptops have changed television viewing!
The laptop plays the critical role in mobilizing office spaces, no doubt, but I think this article overlooks the possibilities presented by these technologies used in tandem. That is, while the laptop may make it possible to complete the entirety of one's work outside of the office, I argue that it was the smartphone that normalized such activities. Unlike the laptop which may be opened, logged into, and checked for notifications on demand, the smartphone instantly alerts its user of notifications, and this immediacy is that which ended the concept of working hours. Now with read receipt features, we can be sure that any non-working-hours communication has been received and acted upon. The smartphone made minute-to-minute interruptions acceptable, and it is these smartphone interruptions that lead to out-of-office laptop work. Without the smartphone in this equation, work is performed at the whim of the employee, but with socially accepted smartphone communications, the boss potentially has his own presence.
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