The unwritten law of technology is that you can say what’s going to happen but never when. This applies to the latest great idea as well as long simmering technological dreams.
Project Orion was top secret, leading edge stuff in the late 1950s. The leading scientific intellects of those Cold War days were beavering away in the western deserts of America on a project that they quite reasonably thought would put men (pre-feminist thinking) on Mars by 1965 with trips to the moons of Saturn just five years later.
The technology was sorted and all that needed was a few test flights. It was not too outlandish to assume we’d be getting holiday video postcards from The Red Sands Resort near Olympus Mons by the Millennium.
There were a few stumbling blocks (technical and economic) but nothing that a good strong dose of political will would not have over come. Sadly, the political will was political will not.
It is often easier to list the barriers to technology assumption than it is to predict the date when all the pieces will fall into place or the catalyst that will allow all the reactants to come together in a new synthesis.
Take telecommuting, for instance. As long as we have had computers with carrying handles, the ‘technoseers’ (I guess that includes me?) have been saying that the end of car/train/plane business travel was nigh. They (I?) may still be right… it is just the devil to say when and how.
I seem to recall the arm and back strain inflicted by Compaq luggables from the early 80s but despite the appearance of sub-kilo computing powerhouses and cheap desktop machines that cost less than a season ticket to your favourite footie team’s matches, telecommuting hasn’t yet taken off big time.
To be sure, the masses are not turning in their bus passes. There are pockets of telecommuters and some part time/episodic telecommuting going on everywhere. Nevertheless, the jams on the roads into the city centres of Europe on a rainy Monday morning (and the jams of escapees on a Friday night) speak volumes of the progress of the telecommuting movement.
The technical stumbling blocks have been falling one by one. Ubiquitous computing power is, as the Americans say, a slam dunk. I’ll spare you the analogies about the computing power available today to that when Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins went on their historic commute in 1969. Let’s just say that sufficient computing power in either compact home friendly form or in briefcase size parcels is within the reach of any company and most individuals.
Ditto the operating and applications software with slight reservations for the amount of IT management overhead that rides along with every business computer (and indeed even purely recreational ones). As we know, the total cost of ownership is mostly hidden in the non-hardware and goes well beyond the acquisition cost.
If this was a dire problem and the only thing in the way of ubiquitous telecommuting, we could all queue up at the door of Wyse et al for cheap, low management windows terminals in the next minute. I suspect Wyse would be surprised to see the multitude but would do its best to cope with success. So we know that it is not hardware acquisition costs or even the stupidly expensive cost of keeping Windows boxes working off (and on) site that is holding back telecommuting.
We are on the threshold of a bandwidth explosion. Yeah, I know that leased lines are unaccountably expensive and the xDSL is not nearly as common as the marketing department of your ISP or telecoms provider would like you to believe. But it is getting there. However, for most document-based telecomputing the humble 56 Kbps modem which has been with us for over a decade is sufficient. You can’t do much interactive video or indeed interactive anything but telecommuting is possible.
ISDN which is more available and more dear for the consumer than xDSL (and so much more appealing for telecoms companies) is available nearly everywhere and a couple of 64 Kbps ISDN channels bonded together is as good as xDSL on a bad day. More dear does not make ISDN-based telecommuting impossible but it does lift the bar a smidgen.
Security concerns are often nominated as the telecommuting bugbear. I think that is bogus. VPNs are quick and cheap and easy nowadays whether you chose to trust the software that Microsoft ‘gives’ you or you splash out for a router based solution. Watchguard, Netopia, Linksys, Zyxel: take your pick. There are a zillion of them.
True, the virus djinn is well and truly out of the bottle but you can get free (for personal use) competent antivirus software (www.grisoft.com) and it’s cheap for business users if you want to avoid the High Street brands. You can get free personal firewalls (www.zonelabs.com) that are cheap for business users or it can be built into your hub or router if you fancy that approach (the less on Windows PCs, the better, I hear you say!)
Telecommuting economically unfeasible? Don’t make me laugh. Count the human cost of commuting — even discounting the occasional unpleasantly gory aftermath of car/train/plane accidents — and telecommuting is streets ahead (forgive the pun). Then you have your environmental impact, your family consequences, your employee performance and effectiveness issues to take into consideration.
Management and politics are the intangibles, and as with Project Orion, seem to be the treacle-like impediment. There have been umpteen European PC ownership initiatives throughout the United States of Europe and much posturing and hot air blowing about broadband being an essential human right. Sure. Yeah. Right now, OK? Until, that is, political will is assembled from the top. Like just might be about to happen…
However, the death of 1000 cuts that has bled the ramp up of telecommuting is the marginal competence of managers in every business. Yeah, you! Distributed managerial incompetence is the telecommuting’s equivalent of distributed denial of service attacks on Internet connectivity. If telecommuting is not ubiquitous it’s because lots of ‘suits’ in the chain of command from the line managers to directors don’t trust slacker employees unless they can count their heartbeats in person (and fag breaks, and trips to the loo and coffee breaks and lunch times…)
Well, something is upon us that may break through that log jam: the elevator button in a posh hotel in Hong Kong and the aftermath of one famous physician using it.
SARS. When that employee that you must have under your thumb chained to their desk next to yours brings with him (or her) the chance of sickness, hospitalisation and death, the telecommuting idea light bulb is sure to shine. The threat of SARS is not only just to fellow toilers in the vineyard but to management itself and the viability of the business and the macro economic climate of the surrounding area.
A glimmering of an appreciation for one of the heretofore unsung benefits of telecommuting, longer life expectancy, is about to dawn. Dramatic? Sure… but so is being on a respirator surrounded by quarantined medical staff in a hospital cordoned off by biohazard tape and guarded by police. The first prosecution for non-cooperation with medical authorities is taking place…
You would not have to be the best salesman on the planet to shift a load of portable PCs, VPNs, firewalls, routers, modems, etc. to the businesses of Toronto or Beijing right now. If you could get there, or if you wanted to…
You could probably even get Singapore Airlines or Cathay Pacific to buy into the telecommuting deal somehow as sponsors or maybe just providing the prizes for contest give-aways, heaven knows they have the seats to spare… once they resume flying!
Conference and trade fairs are being cancelled in the heartland of affordable mass production PC technology. The direct impact of SARS on the computing industry in China, Taiwan and Asia generally (and Silicon Valley?) is mounting.
Will SARS be a windfall for businesses that are straining to cut costs by telecommuting and, dare I mention it, video conferencing? Maybe. It could be the catalyst that gets the already simmering brew of ingredients to come together.
I remember the postal strike in England in the 1980s. Before the strike (a form of sickness to some minds) fax machines were rare and cost hundreds of pounds Sterling. Suddenly faxing surged to the fore. Now fax machines can be had for less than EUR150 and are heading for consumer goods status. Pink ones with selectable ring tones anybody?
Stuff sometimes turns out the way you think it will but you have to be careful if you make any date predictions or think you know when the last piece slots into place. If you think that the above tale of Project Orion, the spaceship-that-never-was, is unconnected to the current zeitgeist of telecommuting, computers, the IT industry, the Internet or anything else that touches your business, think again.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and corporate generator of the world’s most useful personalised spam has just announced his very own space programme to take seven tourists a time for a short trip into space. Elon Musk, founder of Paypal (now an eBay company) is getting into the space game, too. John Carmack, the coder that created Doom and Quake (to the consternation of IT managers everywhere) is testing his X Prize rocket now.
It’s all connected. And it always takes longer than anyone thinks. And the trigger point is usually invisible until it is well past. Rather like a cough in a hotel hallway.
30/05/2003
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