ABSTRACT
Theorizing contemporary cultural work inevitably involves understanding the impact of mobile communication technologies. The diffusion of web-enabled devices in both public and private spheres has been a significant development in the past decade, raising new questions about the appropriate time, location and rewards for labour. If work in creative industries has often involved a degree of flexibility and availability – as jobs appear in unpredictable patterns, with little ongoing security – the added component in today’s work context is how always-on connectivity accelerates these features. This chapter draws on empirical evidence and theories of affect to make sense of this online landscape for labour. I use the creative, communication and information industries as a case study to unpack notions of workplace subjectivity and agency premised on ‘separate spheres’ and ‘clock time’ – assessing their usefulness in biomediated work worlds (Adkins 2009; Clough 2010). While the evidence used is based on a modest study of professionals in Brisbane, Australia, the discussion bears relevance for workers in a range of industries, due to the growing ‘ubiquity’ of mobile computing (Dourish and Bell 2011). If modernist notions of labour hinged on a set number of hours for work, often conducted at a set physical location, the fact that labour now escapes spatial and temporal measures poses obvious problems for defining work limits.
