[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Personally, I suspect the greater obstacle is the cultural one where managers fear they are losing control of all they lord over. If they can't regularly peer over the cubicle walls to see if their minions are toiling away in their little cells what purpose do their own jobs serve?
For many jobs this is a legitimate concern. I have managed people at various offices and I think "management by walking around" is a good idea. People doing tech support, for example, will often need to ask a quick question or hand a note to a coworker. However, you can do all this quite well a full-time high-bandwidth video Internet connection. In the Washington Post article I cited, the secretary in Pakistan can see everything in the office in Washington, DC, and she can be seen. She acts as the receptionist in the lobby. You walk in the office and there she is on a large, thin, widescreen TV mounted on the wall. (See the photo in the article.)
One of the biggest complaints about telecommuting as it was implemented 10 or 15 years ago was that workers did not have much human contact, and they got lonely. This can be fixed with high-bandwidth video connection and large-screen, hi-def televisions. When that technology improves enough, virtual presence will be virtually the same as actual presence. Sooner or later someone planning to amble into a coworker's office to tell a joke over morning coffee is going to whack into a wall-sized video screen, because he will forget that his coworker's office is 1,000 km away.
The other problem with telecommuting is that people working at home tend to be distracted by chores, children and so on. This can be fixed with a small satellite office a few kilometers away from the house. Satellite offices may serve dozens of people from many different corporations and businesses, who share a common area, copy machines and so on, while they work with people scattered around the city (or the continent) in other locations.
This kind of arrangement is very good for 24-hour product development or tech support over different time zones.
This kind of technology is being rapidly developed thanks to off shoring of US software and clerical work in India and Pakistan -- which is a mixed blessing. I doubt that we can turn back the clock or stop the offshore trend, so we should at least take advantage of it to reduce energy consumption and traffic in the US.
- Jed
