Skype Yourself From SF To LA
My part-time editorial assistant used to drive a long way from her place on the east side of L.A. to mine on the west. No more. Now, she's moved upstate, and we work over Skype via voice and text. I used to past the text into the Skype window -- now I mostly just hit the button to share my screen so she can see what I'm doing. And now, Instead of spending an hour or more each way in the car, she can roll out of bed, make herself some coffee and sit down at her desk and she's "in the workplace."
More and more, I think our situation will become the case for other people and other workplace, both with the freelance economy and with more and more businesses taking advantage of technology like this.
This makes the eleventy katrillion dollar "high speed" train even more ridiculous than it already was.
Peter Schrag writes on California Progress Report:
Just a month a ago a revised business plan, intended to reflect a new level of candor from a reconstituted Rail Authority, owned up to the project's steeply rising costs - at $98 billion more than double the $43 billion estimate when voters approved $9 billion in rail bonds two years ago. It also acknowledged the declining projections of ridership.As always, the project was sold as something that wouldn't cost anything in new taxes, but those bonds - with tens of billions more to come if the thing is ever to be completed - will take huge chunks out of California's other urgent needs, from higher education to health to social services. Last week, the Field Poll showed that a large majority of California voters now have second thoughts and want a chance to reverse their earlier vote.
...Riding Europe's high-speed trains is a pleasure, not only because of the time saved and the convenience, but because they're smooth and quiet and infinitely easier to negotiate than air travel.
But California is not Europe, where cities and towns are more densely populated, where there's more public transportation and where those cities have grown around public transportation corridors for the better part of a century and a half. Most travelers arriving by train at Los Angeles' Union Station will still have to drive for an hour, and often more, to get to their ultimate destination.
In Europe, fuel taxes have long been higher than they are in this country; city parking is scarcer and negotiating city streets slower and more difficult. Compared to Paris, London or Brussels, driving in Los Angles is a dream.
The backers of the California project are right that gas won't get any cheaper and that flying won't become easier. Yet it's equally possible that, for business people, technology will increasingly reduce the need to shuttle between northern and southern California by any mode of transportation.
As I was saying. And don't miss the beginning of his piece, on "conspicuous conservation."
Technology works in places where productivity is not exactly at the highest possible level and is not required at that level as well.
In cases where really high productivity is required, physical presence in a place which is meant for high levels of output is required and working from home just dosen't cut it in those cases. It is easy to get distracted when working from home and a lot easier to give a very highly productive output when working from an office. Technology is advanced enough to get good output even today, provided everyone is self motivated and self conscious(or conscientious or whatever the proper word is), but that is something possible only in an ideal world. Even with video conferencing facilities and all that, the volume and quality of output when there is a physical presence is markedly different.
Redrajesh at December 13, 2011 2:22 AM
It was economic nonsense given the initial estimates of cost and ridership and jobs created. Not all of us are innumerate.
So, how does this taxpayer-funded extavaganza end? Will California pull the plug, or will the politicians bet that they'll be dead and gone before anyone is held accountable for the waste?
My money is on the second choice. My optimism has been hopelessly tainted by experience.
MarkD at December 13, 2011 5:20 AM
Wtf was that last comment about? Ya, I would use you for mediation when you can't speak Fucking English
ronc at December 13, 2011 9:44 AM
and your numbers on the are where Redj?
IF productivity is based on target, and you're not making lotsa customer presentation, then it doesn't matter where you are working.
IFF the greenhouse gas thing were actually the big deal they say it is, having people work from home if their job allows would be a slamdunk. I get FAR MORE done at home, because a lot of it is waiting for processes to run, and figuring out failures.
SwissArmyD at December 13, 2011 1:01 PM
ronc -- when you see a comment like that one -- you can generally just ignore it. Those are the spam postings Amy, Gregg & others are fighting throughout the blogosphere.
Jim P. at December 13, 2011 7:45 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2011/12/13/skype_yourself.html#comment-2854322">comment from Jim P.Thanks, Jim P. Yesterday was a rough day -- deadline day -- and I missed that comment. It was spam, ronc.
Amy Alkon at December 14, 2011 8:01 AM
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