The communications and IT
industries have pushed technology advance faster than they have established a
taxonomy for the layman to describe what these industries are producing or
enabling. One issue that engenders
misunderstanding is the use of the terms ÔmobilityÕ and ÔportabilityÕ to
describe technologies and applications.
The purpose of this short note is to argue for a simple, clear
distinction that conforms to proper use of the English language. Although some people might object that
such distinctions are pedantic, the price of such lack of clarity can be
measured by the economic repercussions of inflated confusion.
Strictly speaking, mobility
relates to the ability of the individual or groups of individuals to move, and to
move is typically used as an
intransitive verb. Portability relates to the ability of the individual or groups of
individuals to carry something, and to carry is a transitive verb. Although making something
portable may make the individual or groups of individuals more mobile (i.e.
more able to move) in the pursuit of specific activities, the distinction
between mobility and portability is clear. The challenge is to associate each
in a common context.
Consider two contexts to
illustrate the distinctions of the two terms.
Context 1: Summer
recreation. Some people seek to
get some exercise, spiced with a little adventure. Kayaking has become a popular recreation. Kayaks come in a
variety of shapes and sizes.
Fundamentally, a kayak is designed to port a human being or two over waterways.
Some kayaks are rugged enough and light enough to permit portage over short
distances where there is no waterway for the vessel to ply. Most kayaks are designed to be carried
great distances overland by a four wheel vehicle, like a car. Because the kayak is designed for
transport of a human being, we can declare that it enables the human to be
mobile in the pursuit of certain constrained recreational goals. As the kayak ports the human who pilots
it, the human is mobile in perhaps new ways that permit both close at hand
observation of coves, eddies, and rapids that she has never before witnessed
and communion with creatures she may have viewed only in books when subjected
to more binding technological constraints.
Context 2: Office work.
Combinations of IT and communications technologies permit the office worker to
accomplish his work.
Notwithstanding the tendency of the European to call his cell phone his
Ômobile phoneÕ or his ÔmobileÕ, for short, it is not mobile. The cell phone is portable; so is a
laptop with a wireless communications card. Can one imagine the office to be mobile? Consider an office
on wheels like the vehicle that the Progressive Insurance claims adjustor
uses. Is his office mobile? Not really. That is, the office can be ported
by a vehicle to disparate places where it may function. In part, this has little to do with the
technology and everything to do with the nature of the application as the
accident or the repair is in a stationary location.
Is the work of the office
worker mobile? Yes. And this is the distinction. The portable cell phone and
laptop with communications capabilities make it possible for the office worker
to redefine the boundaries of the office and of the work that he can
accomplish. So, in a very real
sense, the portable cell phone and computer extend the domain of the
office. Just as the office worker
became mobile whenever he got up out of his chair to pace the floor in front of
his desk whenever his boss called him at his office phone to chew him out, with
the cell phone and laptop computer the office worker may now walk barefoot through
the sand on a beach as his boss shouts at him over a wireless connection. Mobility relates to the domain of work
Ð not only where, when, and how the work can be accomplished, but what the work
is as well. New communications and
information devices have contributed to Ð not determined Ð an expansion of that
domain. There still must be an
infrastructure that supports the work in the new domain of the logical office.
Some office workers have
always taken their work home with them, toting brief cases packed with
dossiers, calendars, and other paraphernalia from the physical office. Now, in an era of digital networks,
more often than not those dossiers and calendars are electronic. What the portable devices now permit is
convenient and rich human interaction conjoined with the exploitation of those
dossiers and calendars under relaxed constraints on time and place.
In short, mobility is a hallmark of human work. Portability pertains to the instruments the human can now tap to get the work done in new ways.