The Other Side of Telecommuting

No, this isn’t an evaluation of how it is going (too soon). If there ends up being interesting material, I will probably write about that too. Today, though, is about bigger things.

I am interested in environmental issues, and I remember attending a lecture once where all of the focus was on telecommuting and video conferencing—everything you could do to keep people from traveling by car. Some people asked about other things, like alternative fuels, but he kept coming back to avoiding trips.

I remember being surprised at his single-mindedness, but it made more sense later when I read James Howard Kuntsler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.

I can only give a qualified recommendation of this book. Reading it was a chore, and I think his hatred of people makes him more pessimistic he needs to be, but there was still some good information, and part of it was that while we have perhaps discovered good alternatives for producing electricity for home use and other things, nothing is as effective for the internal combustion engine as fossil fuels, and those are running out.

Now, this is not my area of expertise, and the Leaf seems to be doing pretty well, but what is really interesting to me is how much technology makes possible. How many jobs can be done remotely, and how does the world look if we do it that way?

I  have expressed concern about how easy it would be to become isolated now that I am working at home, but at the same time, there are social things that I have not done in the past because the work day, which ends up being much longer than the hours worked, wears me out. Some people find they go out more when telecommuting, because not only do they want to, but they can.

People will criticize Facebook and things like it because it gives people an illusion of connection when they are really only vegetating in front of the computer, and I am sure that is true for some, but what Facebook has done for me, in addition to allowing me to keep tabs on more people, is that it has led to more face to face interaction. Not only do we schedule events through Facebook, but post-Facebook there are many times when I have recognized people in stores or on the street, where I have never seen them before. Are we actually just starting to cross paths now, or did we not notice before?

It does not matter how good virtual technology gets, I will always want to go travel to see other places in person, and I will want to visit museums live, and see concerts live, though it is nice to have the virtual options. My point is that we have choices that we did not have before, and it leads me to think about all of the other choices we make about what is important to us.

It would be so easy to go off on a socio-political rant here, and I’m going to hold off right now. For one thing, I am in the middle of my Black History month reading. (Yes, I know it’s late. It’s also seven books and it’s going to take more than a month.) Anyway, I am building up a good head of steam, and what with the other half of that and getting deeper into an election year, I suspect I will have a lot to say. No point in getting ahead of myself.

That’s one thing about me, though, which would probably keep me from working well in journalism, is that I don’t like reacting right away. I like taking some time to think and ponder, and so usually by the time I write about something the story is old. Maybe that makes my commentary less useful in some ways, but then I tend to be more interested in root causes and the big picture, where the inspiring story is maybe just a symptom of what is already embedded, so maybe the delay doesn’t matter.

As I move forward with the reading and the writing (and possibly some arithmetic), that will focus more on society’s priorities, but for now a reasonable question for anyone to consider is “What are my priorities, and does my life reflect that?”

You’re right. That’s two questions. So much for the arithmetic.