🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> Joel Garry writes:

> On 17 Dec 2001 10:14:19 -0800, David Masterson
> <dmaster@synopsys.com> wrote:

>> Wouldn't it be nice if the responsible building was done statewide
>> or nationally.  Imagine an environment where:

>> * you lived in a rural location as much as 100 miles from work
>> * your rural community consisted of <100,000 people
>> * the rural communities were arranged as spokes around work centers
>> * your "commute", therefore, was:
>> ** walk to the community light-rail
>> ** light-rail to the HSR train at community center
>> ** HSR to downtown work location
>> ** Segway HT (Ginger) or Zap Scooter to work
>> ** Total time: <1 hour (maybe much less)
>> * you communicated with your co-workers and sales contacts via VR

>> If we built "responsibly" along these lines, how much would traffic
>> congestion on highways be cut when the only traffic they need to
>> carry is truck traffic for the delivery of goods?

> I know!  Let's build an Information Economy!  I bet the stock market
> could hit 30,000!

This doesn't have anything to do with the Information Economy.  Today,
I think you could classify jobs as:

* office work (anything from the CEO to the admin. at the door)
* factory work (heavy development done in one place)
* sales work (people who must visit many orgs. during the day)
* delivery work (trucking)

I'd say my proposal fits the first two and (with Virtual Reality)
could considerably cut down on the third leaving much of the heavy
traffic on the roads to being the last.

> And of course, I telecommuted in the mid-80's.  Lack of face time,
> bad.

I'm pretty well convinced that that is due to a lack of management
expertise on handling telecommuters.  Virtual reality communications
might help (assuming they were not hackable).  There would still need
to be times when you actually got together to discuss work (ie. bond),
but that would not need to be 8 hours a day 5 days a week.

-- 
David Masterson                dmaster AT synopsys DOT com
Sr. R&D Engineer               Synopsys, Inc.
Software Engineering           Sunnyvale, CA