Trends in American Culture
Architecture critic Shafraaz Kaba, quoted in Stephen Graham ed. (2004, p.5):
Why would you want to drive for an hour, get stuck in traffic, and be scolded by your boss, when work is a few keystrokes away from the comfort of your home-office? ... Why even build in reality? If the sensations of space provokes (sic) the same emotion in virtual reality as they do in real life, why go through the expense of construction, building and maintenance? Nothing degrades in cyberspace!
Once heralded as the new way of working for the skilled tech worker (or so I vaguely remember), it seems that telecommuting has not changed the business world.
However, will the practice change the workplace of the year 2015?
Points to Consider
- Telecommuting means that companies don't have to rent/ buy as much office space.
- People might prefer the social aspects of the workspace.
- Whatever their effects on commuters, improved telecommunications might actually increase transportation overall (see summary of Plaut's article in Car Cultures: An Academic Survey and below)
Consequences for in-car media technologies
- Less need to consider the technologies required for Car as office.
Substitution vs. Complementarity
Plaut, Prina Ohana (2004) "Do Telecommunications Make Transportation Obsolete?" in The Cybercities Reader, ed. Stephen Graham. Routledge; London and New York: 162-166.
- Telecommunications and transport: substitution vs. complementarity?
- Trad. thinking -- improved telecommunications reduce need to travel
- Plaut suggests that improved telecommunications actually go hand in hand with an increase in travel/ transportation
- personal travel -- telecommunications induce travel (more likely to see a place and decide to visit)
- but 2/ 3 of transportation in EU (roughly similar in US) = industrial
- complementary increases in industry brought about by elimination of delays, opportunities for improved coordination, routing etc. all make travel easier and more convenient
Posted at Jun 10/2005 10:46PM:
David Platt: Please feel free to add any comments about this topic at all. Tinker with the text to your heart's content! :)
