Third Wave and Telecommuting
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:date: 2014-12-19T12:48:48
:category: computer
:tags: 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