Skeptics should question things. Today, I question this:
Every work day in almost every major city in the entire world, millions, perhaps a billion people, spend a not insignificant chunk of their day (to quote The Police) ” like lemmings trapped in shiny metal boxes, contestants in a suicidal race”.
The vast majority of humans consider this to be normal. This is just a cost of life. Wasting gas, harming the environment for almost no gain, time that could be spent with children, spouses, and friends spent sitting in boxes on a stretch of concrete (that also harms the environment). And all of this to get to a job, in which most of us sit in another small box and type on a computer.
Why is this normal?
Last Friday (February 8th) the city of Austin, Texas (where I live) declared a “Work From Home Day”. City of Austin employees and employees of some major businesses in the Austin area (Dell Computer, Google, Rack Space, AMD, etc) all worked from home.
The goal was to get 10,000 cars off the road on Friday. Results are still being tabulated, but it looks promising. According to reports, drivers in Austin spend 44 hours per years in traffic. Austin is ranked among the worst in the nation and living here, I believe it. Interstate 35 is called the “35 parking lot” by us for a reason.
A few years ago, one of the local IBM offices set all their employees up to work from home while they remodeled the office. The project was such a success that the employees never went back into the office.
The neighborhood where I will be moving has its own elementary school. Every single teacher lives in the neighborhood. Everyone walks to school. The bus only picks up the kids in the local farms.
I don’t think that the US, indeed, the world, will ever give up the idea of personal transportation. We have to start thinking beyond what we are doing though. If 50% of the workforce could work from home, there would be massive savings in fuel, electricity, and just space.
Several reports indicate that people who work from home, on average, are more productive and happier.
