Chapter 2: Trends Towards Mobility 13 remote places or with remote customers. Other professions are inher- ently mobile. Some workers, such as cleaners and gardeners, must be physically present to do their work. Many other jobs are now relying 1 on more information and less on physical items. Accordingly, these jobs can be carried out remotely wherever access to information is required. Telecommuting is becoming practical thanks to the boom in data communications. The Internet is now the de facto vehicle for voice and video conferencing, sharing documents, collaborative editing, or just plain chatting. Internet access has improved greatly in the past few years, particularly thanks to xDSL and cable (at the time of this writing), and mobilized by WLAN, GPRS, 3G, and other wireless data channels. A major agent for the change is the mobile phone. It has permeated western societies rapidly, and is marching on in the developing world. In 2006, there were more than 2.6 billion mobile subscribers globally, and the number is expected to increase to 4 billion in the next few 2 years. Mobile voice access is now surpassing fi xed telephony globally, as shown in Figure 2-2. Not only the western world, but also the developing populations (such as rural China, Africa, and India) witness rapid mobilization of their telephone service. For many practical pur- poses, we can now consider mobile telephony as the norm in urban settings. Not only work, but also leisure is changing. Global travel, particu- larly for holidays, has been increasing throughout the 20th century in pace with increases in income and free time. This trend may continue until, for instance, the scarcity of natural resources drives prices of energy radically higher, or other global developments, such as biologi- cal threats, render travel risky. 2.1.1 Five-Second Attention Span Improved communications lead to a situation where it is possible to carry out both work and leisure activities absolutely anywhere. One 3 can read e-mail on a train; bid for an eBay item in the middle of a meeting; agree to a time for golf while shopping for milk. Indeed, the new freedom of time and place seems to change our lives at a funda- mental level. 1 Bits instead of atoms, as Negroponte (1995) famously pointed out. 2 http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127820-c,researchreports/article.html 3 http://www.ebay.com/