For many people, whose first experiences using mobiles were in the early or mid-2000s, it’s hard to imagine a time when friends and loved ones didn’t have mobiles, or when people didn’t have access to one another after work hours. This chapter opens in California with a story of Los Angeles traffic; it was terrible, even back in 1990. Some companies wanted to make their mobile staff more productive, so they provided them staff with car phones—permanently mounted, fairly large phones with an antennae attached to the back window. Organizations paid for these “business tools”; and they were company property, just like a computer. During these initial years, some early adopters of new technology started bringing tools, like tablet computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs), to work, and you’ll meet several of these people This chapter sets the stage for understanding how and why negotiations for control over mobile communication emerged.