Community Offices

Gas today is expensive and was recently approaching four dollars a gallon. Those who commute by bus, train, subway and car in metropolitan areas view their commute as a daily grind to be endured but never anticipated. Companies are spending billions of dollars in attempts to create cars that get more mileage on a gallon of gas, or that circumvent gasoline as a fuel and rely on hydrogen, biofuels or electricity. Billions more is being spent to discover new repositories of oil to sate our desires for energy.

As I ponder all the machinations of cars, fuels and the like, I think of the fact that commuting is doing nothing more than moving our physical bodies from our homes to an office, to a factory or to some other place of work. As a software engineer, I wonder about the possibilities of turning things around; of bringing work to our bodies.

Some people telecommute. That's entirely possible for people whose primary work is to sit at a computer, phone or some other machinery that can be used almost anywhere. It's rather less practical for a steel worker; a steel plant isn't something that can readily be put next to each steelworker's home. Steelworkers don't telecommute. Others don't telecommute because they really need to be able to be face-to-face to the people that they work with. Emails and phone calls are fine, but they only work so well.

The possibilities beyond telecommuting are somewhat in the realm of science fiction, but bear with me as I wonder "what if?".

Suppose there were office buildings in your community that served as your place of work. Instead of commuting to a building far away that is devoted to your company, you commute to a building close by that is devoted to your community. So when you walk into your place of work, you will be in a building populated by employees of hundreds of different companies. It would serve as a place where people could telecommute. In truth, it would serve as a place where their work could be made to be close by.

The internet is the "information superhighway", and that's exactly what we need if we want to bring our work closer to us. Instead of building wider and wider roads to handle the vast numbers of cars travelling to and fro, we can build wider and wider information pipes to let our work travel to and fro. It used to be that our work was the mountain and we were Mohammed; we went to our work. Today, we are the mountain and our work is Mohammed. These days, our work should be coming to us.

This follows roughly the same model as supermarkets. Our food comes to a place in our community where we can easily go and get it. That, instead of everyone driving to farms and ranches to get our food supplies. It's true of material goods, services and even gasoline. All of the things that we need are efficiently brought to our communities - except our work.

If our work was as close to our homes as are all the goods and services that we use, then we would no longer need cars, trains, busses and the like to move us quite so far. Highways and railways would be reserved for those moving goods about, and for those who are travelling for the sheer joy of it. People who want to commute could always commute to a community office building in another community.

The first people to be able to use community offices would be those who telecommute today. They are the people who work entirely with information. Writers, artists, programmers, accountants and a number of other professionals could begin today. Because most people need to coordinate with other people, some of the latest and greatest technologies would have to be brought to each office. Things like quality teleconferencing would have to become commonplace.

Community offices can be used today by some professions that you might not expect. How about pilots? Today, the military uses a form of telecommuting to permit their people to fly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) all around the world from central locations in the United States. While I wouldn't lump the military in with community offices for reasons of security, the fact is that telecommuting isn't just for office workers.

Today, there is the highly experimental technique called telesurgery, where doctors in one location operate on a patient in another location by using robotic tools. The doctor is performing the surgery, only his hands are manipulating controls HERE to control surgical instruments THERE, relying on cameras to see what needs to be done. You might imagine how invaluable this could be if the surgical tools could be placed in remote locations to permit skilled doctors around the world to help people anywhere at any time. Imagine if the surgical tools could be brought to your home to permit a doctor in another state to perform the surgery.

Telesurgery is part of a broader capability called telepresence. In telepresence, an operator has controls HERE to control tools and machinery that are THERE. The information superhighway makes sure that the two remain connected to each other. Community offices would take advantage of telepresence to permit almost anyone to accomplish their work from the safety, comfort and convenience of location near to their home. Imagine all the steelworkers for a steelmill in Pennsylvania living throughout the country (or even the world), networked together by voice and video, handling their respective tasks through telepresence techniques. For one thing, that mill that has to operate 24 hours a day wouldn't need a night shift anymore. People in another part of the world where it's day could operate the machinery.

Does everyone end up working in community offices? Do we ever physically interact with anyone at work ever again? Well, even if everyone worked in community offices, we would still physically interact with the people that we live near, because they'd go to the same community offices that we do. Those are the people we'd go to lunch with, chat with by the coffee maker and in the copy room.

If you're a believer in globalization of trade, then you're a believer in community offices because they make the employee's physical location inconsequential to the job that they can perform. Telepresence lets everyone in the world work together more effectively, and lets those most qualified for individual jobs be able to access those jobs. It does nothing for cultural and language barriers, of course. Those are things that we have to address as human beings, which is where technology always ends up.