I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite ready to abandon my landline telephone and rely solely on my cell phone for communications. From time to time, though, I do consider when and under what circumstances it will be feasible for me to do so. There are obvious cost advantages to settling on the cell phone, as well as the plus of never missing a call. On the other hand, such issues as coverage, persistence and clarity of signal, and, frankly, history and behavior have resulted in my communications life being partly tethered and partly mobile.

So my personal business case for increased mobility awaits what you might call further developments. With huge investments by infrastructure providers such as AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon under way, I’m reasonably certain that greater capability, reliability, and applications are coming in the wireless realm. And these developments will affect not only individuals such as myself, but also the society at large.

In thinking about the application of mobile technology to manufacturing, the possibilities are just beginning to be understood. Already, mobile technology is being deployed successfully in such business processes as field service, customer relationship management, factory floor, warehouse data capture, and device monitoring and management. But the power of mobility unleashed also holds the prospect of changing, in a broad sense, how we work, how individuals relate to corporate organizations, how these organizations will be shaped in the future, and how information is created, how it moves, and how it is acted upon.

To some extent, these changes are already with us. The 9-to-5 workday, with its time-based metric, doesn’t define today’s reality for white-collar people. Pervasive, computer-based access to information has driven a demand to leverage this access via greater collaboration and integration within businesses and other organizations. And the technology itself has given rise to a new set of expectations about greater business speed, better decision making, and even more innovation.

How far could, or should, we go with the concept of mobility? Could we truly get to a “lights out” factory environment in which production is managed remotely? Is that desirable even if it is feasible? Do we want our companies to have more remote workers, with all that that implies in terms of creating and nurturing corporate culture and identity, managing people, and even how we define a business headquarters and an office? And from an individual perspective, do we want others to know where we are at any given time? What would this mean in terms of individual privacy and freedom?

As is usually the case with important technological advances, including wireless, human and organizational behaviors have to catch up with what’s possible. I believe this will happen step by step, person by person, over time, and when sufficient critical mass is reached, organizational behavior will change. But I also believe that progressive companies can help this process along by envisioning a sense of the possible and being proactive in accepting and embracing change.

There is an inevitability about all of this, of course. I never said never about abandoning that landline phone. I know it’s only a question of timing. Frankly, I can’t wait until it happens.

What’s your view on the wisdom of relying on wireless technology? Write to me at Dbrousell@thomaspublishing.com.