🚀 go-pugleaf

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 1995 02:38:19 -0500 (CDT)
From: Richard Aleksander <artdealr@eden.com>
To: gcrick@sqi.utexas.edu
Subject: Re: Environment Friendly Urban Planning for Airport Design in Malaysia, Japanese Architect Kisho Kurokawa (fwd)

Gene,
Thanks so much for the response to my post.  I found another post that 
has a strange subject listed but which deals with telecommuting.  I'm 
forwarding it to you as follows.
Richard Aleksander

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 27 AUG 1995 07:10:46 GMT 
From: George A. Gleason <gg@well.sf.ca.us>
Newgroups: alt.architecture.alternative, alt.energy.renewable, sci.energy,
    talk.environment, alt.planning.urban, sci.environment, alt.architecture,
    ca.environment, ba.transportation, misc.transport.urban-transit
Subject: Re: Environment Friendly Urban Planning for Airport Design in Malaysia, Japanese Architect Kisho Kurokawa 



Following up on Kisho Kurokawa's question about information infrastructure
and living conditions... Horace's response covers most of the bases, but
I'll mention a few things about telecom which are relevant (i.e. you did ask
about information infrastructure after all).

As I understand it, NTT uses a measured-service system where even local
calls are billed in time increments.  This tends to discourage use of
telecom as an alternative to physical commuting.  So the first change is to
provide a means by which a worker can be connected from home to office all
day without incurring time charges.  In the United States, residential
telephone service can be had in most places with unlimited free local calls.
 Another option here is "Centrex" service, where a business' lines from the
telephone exchange have features similar to those of a PBX, including the
ability to transfer calls from one line to another; the relevance being that
a worker at home can have a Centrex line on the same line group as the
company, and dial into the company's office at no charge (i.e. it's
considered an "intercom" call).

The next step is to upgrade the cable facilities in residential
construction, to more closely resemble those at commercial buildings.
Apartments in particular are notorious for inadequate telecom facilities.
What is needed, at absolute minimum, is the ability to get *three* analog
lines into a residence at the same time, and have them terminated on jacks
in a "home office" area.  The next level up is to have all rooms in a home
or apartment provided with 4-pair category 3 wiring, which is home-runned
back to a central connecting facility, i.e. not looped through a series of
jacks as has been the practice in the past.  This will allow the use of
multiple lines, key systems or small hybrid PBXs, and LANs in the home,
which facilitate home office work.  (BTW my firm provides design, consulting
and implementation in all of these areas; email service@dialtone.com or
phone us, IS&N Inc., at 510-644-8085)

The next step from there is ISDN or some other form of digital telephony
which will support higher data transmission speeds.  Now frankly I find all
this video-telephony and high-bandwidth stuff a bit over-hyped; there is no
need to see your coworker on the screen as you're word-processing a memo.
So the more high-tech implementations involving hybrid networks based in
part on coaxial cable distribution, are over-expensive overkill.  For
business applications, straight ISDN is quite adequate unless you're doing
something specialised like graphics production or updating massive
databases.

Finally, from the technical to the social, work rules must be rewritten to
emphasise goals rather than process, i.e. allow workers a greater amount of
flexibility in their work habits.  One of the major benefits of tele-work
from home, is the ability of parents to spend time with their children and
to be more present in their neighborhoods.  In the United States these
concerns are matters of life and death in areas of our cities where violence
and the destruction of family life by economic circumstances have become
endemic.  So, for example, parents who tele-work can keep an eye on their
kids during the day.  But if their company is still using the old micro-
management model, the parents are scarcely free to say Hi to their kids when
they get home from school, so we're back to where we started from, or a bit
worse since the kids come home & see that Mom & Dad are sitting in front of
their computers & ignoring them (the kids).  In a more goal-oriented
environment, the parents could take a break from their work to spend a bit
of time with the kids when they get home from school each day, and then make
up the time once the kids are outside playing.  The point is, as long as the
job gets done on time, it doesn't hurt to give people a chance to have a
more humane existence.  Now the problem here is there is an entire layer of
management which is in essence parasitic since it justifies its existence by
its ability to micro-manage the workers below it in the orgnisational chart;
and this layer of management will find its existence threatened under a
tele-work system where it can't observe every moment of the other workers'
daily existences.  This layer of management will be rendered superfluous,
and will kick & scream at any attempts to introduce tele-work.  What is
clearly needed here is a program of re-training to assure these people that
they will still have jobs, doing something else i.e. more productive than
simply micro-managing others.  Once they feel secure, they will probably see
the advantages.

There is one possible downside to tele-work and that is the diminution of
the sense of community in the physical and interpersonal sense which occurs
at a physical workplace.  We've only begun to realise that workplaces are
social ecosystems, with all that implies.  However, there is also the
potential that tele-work will mean that people can spend more time in their
neighborhoods, and this may lead to a resurgence of the sense of community
in the place where one lives.  This could be particularly valuable at the
lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder, where anything that builds a sense
of community will also reduce crime & other social problems... though it may
also have beneficial effects in upper-middle-class areas which have been
characterised by high turnover due to families moving when their jobs are
relocated.  By "relocating" via modem, the families can stay put, their kids
can build stable friendships, and they can all have a deeper sense of roots
in their neighborhoods.