[9831] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
re: Open Letter: LA Data Freeways
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Larry Walker)
Sat Jan 22 13:26:06 1994
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 94 12:25:11 CST
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: walkerl@med.ge.com (Larry Walker)
>From: fbaker@acc.com (Fred Baker)
>I think that this has a lot of merit, but it's also a tad too clean. The
>kid at MacDonald's emails you a hamburger? The mechanic FTP's your car to
>his garage? This is only going to work for white collar workers, and a
>subset of them at that.
This is absolutely true. A telecommuting program can only work as part of a
larger program of adjustments. Employers may have to look at instituting 3
12-on/12-off shifts with two teams of job-sharing employees, so that
employees only have to make a 5-hour-each-way commute once a week, instead
of 5 times a week.
The kid giving me a Mac burger is working at a Mac's in _my_ neighborhood.
The big problem is going to be the people who have to go clear across the
urban area to work. With the painful exception of the immediate quake area,
the region's overall services and infrastructure appear to be _locally_
intact; it's the average LA resident's proclivity to work/live/eat/shop all
over the urban region that will be severly impacted, I believe.
>
>The issue is not whether they have a PC, but whether they can use it
>ENTIRELY to do their work.
Not entirely true: the overall transit system can benefit greatly from
large numbers of people who can only do 1/2 or 1/4 of their job at home.
Remember that every day you stay home reduces _your_ contribution to
transit load by 20%! Some job-sharing, some job trading (let MacDonald's
employees on opposite sides of major freeway faults swap jobs) and pretty
soon the problem is a lot less acute.
Also telecommuting can mean much more than using a PC: strategic
accumulation of paper-based work during the week can fuel a 1-day/wk
telecommuter; fax or mail can feed a 1/2-time white collar worker, etc.
We need to look a a variety of 10% wins, which quickly relieve half the
problem, rather than expecting a silver-bullet solution (read "let's throw
Fed $$$s at the Freeway problem"). I encourage massively deployment of
grass-roots improvised solutions, from index-card-based real bulletin
boards to local BBSs for job-sharing (or sleeping rooms for rent!) to
Usenet newsgroups on work-at-home tips.
Larry Walker
System Architect email: walkerl@med.ge.com
GE Medical Systems phone: 414.785.8262
P.O. Box 414 / NB-902 fax: 414.785.4331
Milwaukee, WI 53201 dialcomm: 8*322-8262
