Workation and the Doubling of Time and Place

This chapter examines the relationship between workation and second offline, based on field work undertaken in workation places: Hida City, Japan; Bali Island, Indonesia; Tarifa, Spain; and New York, USA. Workation is a work style that involves staying in a resort area and working at a local coworking space on a weekly or monthly basis. Communication technologies such as telephone and email have made it possible to connect with someone in another place, but the boundary between ‘connecting’ and ‘superimposing’ is gradually beginning to blur as a result of mobile media. Furthermore, the meaning of ‘mobile’ is also changing. Results of field work demonstrate that workation is a work style in which ‘kairological time,’ ‘clock time’ and ‘instantaneous time’ are simultaneously superimposed. Furthermore, coworking spaces situated in resort areas where workation takes place are a hybrid collect-if of people and materials that enable the superimposing of time and bridge the online and offline worlds.