Individual, unaided human abilities are constrained. Media have helped us
to transcend boundaries in thinking, working, learning, and collaborating by
supporting distributed intelligence. Wireless and mobile technologies provide
new opportunities for empowering humans, but not without potential pitfalls.
We explore these opportunities and pitfalls from a lifelong-learning perspective
and discuss how wireless and mobile technologies can influence and change conceptual
frameworks such as the relationship between planning and situated action, context
awareness, human attention, distances in collaborative design activities, and
the trade-off between tools for living and tools for learning.
The impact of wireless and mobile technologies is illustrated with our research
projects, which focus on moving "computing off the desktop" by "going
small, large, and everywhere." Specific examples include human-centered
public transportation systems, collaborative design, and information sharing
with smart physical objects.