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Equipped with cell phones, beepers, and handheld computers, the 'conspicuously industrious' blur the line between home and office by working anytime, anywhere.

We use our gadgets for distraction and entertainment. We use them to avoid work while giving the impression that we're actually working hard.

Sometimes I work purely 8-12 shifts, banging stuff into the computer. Other times, my office is like a scene from a detective movie, with Post-it Notes, plans, photographs all stuck on the walls and arrows going everywhere, and it's 4 A.M.

My husband is in charge of all phone, email and texting duties at home. He even has to turn on the TV and air conditioning because I'm so hopeless with technology.

Whether you're a programming prodigy or the office manager holding it all together, technology empowers small groups of passionate people with an astonishing degree of leverage to make the world a better place.

Surely in a world of email, video conferencing and virtual assistants, isn't being expected to show up at the office extremely anachronistic? Yet to date it seems that where one works does matter. That creativity and innovation do feed off physical interactions between people.

We are able to use technology to make it clear that someone's car is available or a room in a home is accessible; that there is an available desk in an office someplace.

I have always believed that technology should do the hard work - discovery, organization, communication - so users can do what makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly.

If working remotely is such a great idea, why isn't everyone doing it? I think it's because we've been bred on the idea that work happens from 9 to 5, in offices and cubicles. It's no wonder that most who are employed inside that model haven't considered other options, or resist the idea that it could be any different. But it can.