Researchers in the United Kingdom are
currently investigating how people use their
smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops at
work and at home as part of the project "Creativity
Greenhouse: Digital Epiphanies.
The U.K.'s Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council is funding the project.
Mauthner
wants to find out whether some are beginning to
reduce their screen time and "change the ways
in which these technologies blur the boundaries
between work and the rest of their lives."
Last fall, Mr. Swartz began an appointment as a research fellow at Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics,
The university then tried to obstruct Mr. Swartz's laptop specifically, by barring the Media Access Control address, or MAC address, that the network had assigned to his computer.