Frustrated remote worker

Remote workers must resist the tech panopticon 

New legislation is expected to create a stronger right to work remotely but Jason Walsh argues we should beware the intrusion of workplace technology into our homes
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Image: Andrea piacquadio/Pexels

26 October 2022

Yesterday I was overcome, just for a moment, with envy. Having decamped to a research library so I can work without interruption, on my way out I glanced at the beautifully untidy collection of books that half-buried a researcher at the next table. Having just banged out three articles I was moved by the sight of someone engaged in deep, thoughtful, slow and, most of all, independent work – the corpus of the late filmmaker and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini in her case.

Walking on, I tried to remind myself that I knew nothing of this woman’s circumstances: I don’t know if she is well paid, poorly paid or entirely unpaid, and I don’t know if she is enjoying her work, I said to myself. Indeed, during my own doctorate, which was unpaid, I came to develop deeply ambivalent feelings about the subject to which I had dedicated so many years of my life.

I also reminded myself why I was working from a library in the first place: to get out of my small apartment. As anyone who worked from home throughout the pandemic restriction could tell you, the nature of the experience is dependent on the nature of the home. All of which is to say that remote working is no panacea. With it can come frustration and isolation and, most pernicious of all, the collapsing together of the public and private spheres.

Is it always good to talk?

Recent weeks have seen revolting employers trying to put an end to remote working – at least for us Morlocks if not for management Eloi – but the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Indeed, the government’s revised legislation on the right to work from home is expected to be published later this week, and leaks suggest it will be more balanced than the previous proposed bill, which, frankly, amounted to nothing more than hot air.

But even if employers are just going to have suck up remote work there are other potential pitfalls.

A study conducted on behalf of remote collaboration platform Slack (so no conflict of interest there) found that mandatory returns to the office have become ‘productivity killers’ for workers.

After polling 1,000 office workers, the study found that nine in 10 respondents are in the office at least one day a week, but they spend nearly two hours on video calls to colleagues that aren’t in the office. One in five found this time sink increased to nearly half of their working day, with up to four hours daily spent on video calls when in the office.

This emotionally exhausting drag on productivity is not the only issue, though. Smelling the euros, dollars and cents in the air, software companies have constructed a technological panopticon of surveillance software to allow management to treat grown adults like school children even from a distance.

Even artificial intelligence has been deployed to bolster business stupidity, creating digital spies at the heart of the home who can keep tabs on us more thoroughly than any boss ever could. As usual, the industry that brought us the ‘monetisation’ of personal data has proved itself to be relentlessly amoral. Which is fine: little else should be expected from industry. What matters, however, is how we, as individuals and as a society, respond to it. 

The right to remote work should be celebrated, but with it comes the potential for hitherto unseen intrusion into the holy of holies, the home, and even into our very selves. There is an answer, though: no.

From the best to the worst, technology in itself is inert at least insofar as it lacks agency. Consider that the worst excesses of social media come not merely from connecting people using telecommunications networks, but from the gaming of those networks to produce engagement results that benefit the platforms whatever the cost to society. Equally, splitting the atom provides us with the ability to produce clean and cheap energy or perform barbaric acts of war. 

In other words, the ends to which we put technology, and the degree to which we let it into our lives, is a choice. It may not be a choice as simple as what to have for breakfast or what colour of shirt to wear, but it is, nonetheless, a choice.

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