Laptop and the City

Mobile computer technology is a today's fact, an invention that has affected our daily lives in many ways. In 1965, Paul Smith, published a guide to educate managers how to use computers in businesses.[1] Since then, computer's networks is a basic infrastructure for most working places; computers decreased working force and increase productivity.

Probably the first portable computer was used by NASA, in the early 1980's, on the space shuttle program. It had a die-cast magnesium case and folding electroluminescent graphics display screen. But, the computer considered by most historians to be the first true portable computer was the Osborne 1. Adam Osborne, an ex-book publisher founded Osborne Computer and produced the Osborne 1 in 1981, a portable computer that weighed 24 pounds and cost $1795. The Osborne 1 came with a five-inch screen, modem port, two 5 1/4 floppy drives, a large collection of bundled software programs, and a battery pack.[1] In 2007, laptops' sales in American beat desktops'. According to Los Angeles times,[2] sixteen of the twenty bestselling PCs on Amazon.com of Christmas 2007 season were laptops. Of the 4,000 Dell. Inc. computers it bought this year, 60% were laptops, so that rail inspectors could file reports from their trucks and other employees could work from home. U.S. corporations are expected to make laptops the majority of their computer purchases in 2008. BNSF Railway Co. already has. Parents and kids consult laptops for quick facts at the dinner table as they once did with encyclopedia. Falling prices and technological improvements are the other two factors driving laptop sales. The recent "One Laptop per Child" project, of Nicolas Negroponte gives opportunities for even more reduction on laptops prices. The project aims to sell $100 Linux operated laptops for education,[3] and versions with Windows will cost $20 more.

Same as the cell phone, the laptop has affected our perception of place and space. When we refer to our working place we do not mean our office but our laptop. The dematerialization of the office space is being hurried also by the shift from paper files to electronic storage.[1] Our working place has not an address where people can reach us but an email address and we can contact with people everywhere, anytime as long as we are connected on line, and we can work anywhere, in any place. Telework, a form of work in which work is performed in a location remote from central office or production facilities, thus separating the worker from personal contact with coworkers there and new technology enables this separation by facilitating communication,[2] is growing among workers.

by using a simple mathematical operation; 5 workers telecommuting once a week, one each day of the week, equals 4 workers working at the office every day, equals 80% less working space, less rent. However, it is not clear yet that teleworking will lead to the shrinking of office spaces or to decentralization, the expansion of office buildings outside the city centre. According to the London Office Policy Review of 2007, in 2006 there was an increasing demand of office space in most of the central London area, but mainly in the Central Activities Zone.[1] It neither clear yet that teleworking increases productivity, since based on recent studies, people taking work to home tend to work more hours. This happens due to the fact that some people prefer take overwork to home instead of staying at the office until late evening.[2]

What is interesting about teleworking is the fact that most teleworkers have their home as their base but they actually work in different other places.^{( t. 3 )} A research by Microsoft Windows Mobile, suggests that mobile workers are taking their work to the beach, onto sailing dinghies and into tree houses and that nine out of ten employees prefer to work outdoors. [3] A scenario like this gives us the opportunity to start thinking of new perfectives of the urban environments. People working in the open space is a completely different lifestyle of working people.

We could of the city as a public environment that provides people the infrastructure they need to work. We have to consider all these people that do not like to work in huge offices buildings or from their home, and they find themselves working with their laptop in cafes. We must think of a new kind of public working places, from a more social and humane aspect. We can imagine of a cozy public place with all the required office infrastructure, where people can work individually or have business meetings with their colleagues or with their clients, discuss and socialize with people from the same or completely different working domain. A contemporary kind of a social club where people can work and have fun.

If we assume that we are spending more time in the urban environment and less in our home, we can we start thinking our home as a place that we only sleep in, and all other needs are being covered by the city? Does this mean that there are going to be more restaurants to eat or more cafes and pubs? We can then imagine a new kind of public space where we can meet our friends and socializing would make us fell just like home. A “public living room” where we can make our

own drink, order delivery food, sit on comfortable coaches and watch TV or the movie we desire, or gossip with friends while listening to our favorite music. These places could be called “live spaces” and could be indoor or outdoor, divided in small more private “living rooms” that we will rent per hour. Supplies for drinks and snacks will be provided in each room and also house electronic equipment as a TV screen, a dvd player, a sound system and wireless internet connection. We can also think of new functions in the city, like public places where we can have a shower after work before we meet friends for dinner, public sleeping places to get a nap during lounch break or just to have some rest before going out for beers, also lockers situated all over the city where we can storage our shopping, or stuff we do not want to carry while moving in the city. During "Metropolis and urban life", a workshop healed in Tokyo in 2005, Yasmine Abbas, a French architect, presented a study about neo-nomads.[1] The author neo-nomand herself, explains a new kind of urban lifestyle. The city is their house and they share it with all other people. The minimum they carry is a USB stick. They use shared laptops and wireless internet, they live in a shared room without kitchen and bathroom. They eat outside and they use public sport centres' facilities for baths. Urban living rooms could accommodate not only teleworkers and neo-nomads but also tourists visiting the city for a few days or a few hours.

Laptop and Sustainability

Even if some people claim that the technological revolution supports the growing division between people that have access to IT and the knowledge economy and those that do not have,[2],[3] we will argue of the opposite. Projects like the "One Laptop per Child" and the free Google Pack Software[4],[5], make us think of an easy to access IT future development. Computer's industry will just have to follow the trends if it want to exist in the future.

Teleworking is not clear yet if it will affect centralizing or urban sprawl. However, it is likely to has an impact on the urban form in terms of functions in the urban environment. Working places, housing, and entertainment and open spaces will become more flexible and mixed together. Therefore diversity and multiplicity will provide to the citizens multiple options of lifestyle. We could then think the future city as a context of diversity of forms and functions. Free formed multifunction buildings everywhere that change uses and images. An interactive architecture all over the city, an interactive city where nothing is stable. The street can become a cinema, and the cinema can be a business meeting place. Our garden is a working place and office buildings can transformed to houses, exterior walls can change shapes, creating spaces from private to public and cafes can become living rooms.

What about the environment? Thinking of all that energy that a laptop consumes to operate, we would think that laptops, and computers in general, have a negative environmental impact. But, if we think that all these technologies consume renewable energy, then the general impact on sustainability may be positive. Gadgets like the "Voltaic's new Generator solar bag",[6] that can charge the laptop, is not a solution for the problem since it is not affordable yet. A future solution will be the self sufficient energy city, that provides people renewable energy, in an affordable price.