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+title: Third Wave and Telecommuting
+date: 2014-12-19T12:48:48
+tags:
+  - computer
+categories:
+  - politics
+  - sociology
+---
+
+I have been reading Tim Bray’s blogpost_ on how he started to work in
+Amazon, and I got ignited by the comment_ by len_ and particularly by
+this (he starts quoting Tim):
+
+    “First, I am totally sick of working remotely. I want to go and
+    work in rooms with other people working on the same things that
+    I am.”
+
+    And that says a lot. Whatever the web has enabled in terms of
+    access, it has proven to be isolating where human emotions matter
+    and exposing where business affairs matter. I can’t articulate that
+    succinctly yet, but there are lessons to be learned worthy of
+    articulation. A virtual glass of wine doesn’t afford the pleasure of
+    wine. Lessons learned.
+
+Although I generally agree with your sentiment (these are really not
+your Friends, except if they already are), I believe the situation with
+the telecommuting is more complex. I have been telecommuting for the
+past eight years (or so, yikes, the time fly!) and I do like it most of
+the time. However, it really requires special type of personality,
+special type of environment, special type of family, and special type of
+work to be able to do it well. I know plenty of people who do well
+working from home (with occasional stay in the coworking office) and
+some who just don’t. It has nothing to do with IQ or anything like that.
+Just for some people it works, and I have some colleagues who left Red
+Hat just because they cannot work from home and the nearest Red Hat
+office was just too far from them.
+
+However, this trivial statement makes me think again about stuff which
+is much more profound in my opinion. I am a firm believer in the coming
+of what Alvin and Heidi Toffler called “`The Third Wave`_”. That after
+the mainly agricultural and mainly industrial societies `the world is
+changing`_, so that “much that once was is lost” and we don’t know
+exactly what is coming. One part of this change is substantial change in
+the way we organize our work. It really sounds weird but there were
+times when there were no factories, no offices, and most people were
+working from their homes. I am not saying that the future will be like
+the distant past, it never is, but the difference makes it clear to me
+that what is now is not the only possible world we could live in.
+
+I believe that the standard of people leaving their home in the morning
+to work will be in future very very diminished. Probably some parts of
+the industrial world will remain around us (after all, there are still
+big parts of the agricultural world around us), but I think it might
+have the same impact (or so little impact) as the agricultural world has
+on the current world. If the trend of the offices dissolution will
+continue (and I don’t see the reason why it wouldn’t, in the end all
+those office buildings and commuting is terrible waste of money) we can
+expect really massive change in almost everything: ways we build homes
+(suddenly your home is not just the bedroom to survive night between two
+workshifts), transportation, ways we organize our communities (suddenly
+it does matter who is your neighbor), and of course a lot of social
+rules will have to change.  I think we are absolutely not-prepared for
+this and also we are not talking about this enough. But we should_.
+
+
+.. _len:
+    http://www.reverbnation.com/lenbullard
+.. _blogpost:
+    https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/12/01/Amazonian
+.. _comment:
+    https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/12/01/Amazonian#c1418909596.170737
+.. _`The Third Wave`:
+    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_%28Toffler%29
+.. _`the world is changing`:
+    http://youtu.be/-CgTbMgzQ8o
+.. _should:
+    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DhNv55-koU