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Date Posted:
Tuesday July 10, 2001 03:24:12 PM
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Agrarian society without the famine? I have just realised that I have
been inverse telecommuting, and that I am not the only one. I live in
town X, working for a firm with offices in X and Y. I have just
finished a period of some months driving for 45 minutes each way from my home in X to the offices in Y (which I hear on the radio today
has a transport crisis), so that I can use a network link to work with machines in X, about 15 minutes by bicycle from my home. This means that my boss in Y gets to keep an eye on me, I get to talk more easily to colleagues on the same or similar projects and some rent accounting (not entirely internal funny-money) looks better.
Now think about call centres. People commuting to them are answering
calls that might otherwise be made to staff in small local offices -
who might, at least in rural areas, live closer to their work. So
government encouragement of communications and research for
telecommuting might INCREASE transport congestion and energy
consumption.
Is this a well known inverse consequence?
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