JALA Thoughts

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Even though many legal barriers to teleworking have been eliminated over the past couple of decades, some of them persist. A particularly insidious barrier only applies to cross-state-border teleworkers. Since most teleworkers, even today, are telecommuters—living within commuting distance of their employer’s offices—this has not been a problem affecting thousands of people—so far. But, as I mentioned several months ago, some teleworkers are seriously affected by one barrier: double taxation.

The scenario is as follows: Janice teleworks for an employer in New York, say, but lives in California. Occasionally Janice goes to New York for meetings and conferences in her employer’s facilities but mostly she works from her home in California. She loves her job and is doing well at it. Except for one thing: New York wants to tax her income even though she earns it primarily in California. Of course, California also wants to tax the same income since she earns it there. What to do?

Tags: legal barriers to teleworking, political pressure, taxation

Apr 20

Telecommuting raises ethics

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We’ve been hinting at it for years but now there’s a study that claims that telecommuters are more ethical than their in-office colleagues. I was alerted to the study by an article on the GigaOm website titled: How to make your team more ethical: Let them telecommute. One of the three key findings in the 17 August 2011 report by Ethisphere was:

Sixty-eight percent of responding companies allow their employees to work from home on a regular basis. Of those, 89 percent reported having no ethics violations during the past two years among their work-from-home employees.

Although the overall study was focused on the impact of open offices on ethics, this was an interesting result. Ethisphere surveyed more than 200 companies to arrive at their conclusion. Two primary factors in this ethical superiority of home-based workers were, according to Ethisphere (I’m paraphrasing a little):

Lower levels of temptation as a consequence of less frequent mischief opportunities away form the office; and
Greater concern that any straying from the path of righteousness might end in a call to come back to the dreaded office.

That is: “If I do my job and don’t screw up I can keep on working like this, feeling more in control of my life and, wonderfully, avoid those grinding commutes!”

Sounds good to me.

Tags: ethics of telecommuting/transportation, telecommuters, telecommuting surveys, teleworkers

Energy & Environment, Peak oil

Feb 27

Reviewing the situation . . . for oil

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A few years ago I posted some comments on the global oil situation. The gist of the comments was: We are at or past the peak of global oil production; therefore we need to reduce our need for oil somehow. Otherwise the market will reduce demand for us by pricing oil out of reach of many/most of us. That was in the mid-2000s. There’s a similar set of comments I made in the mid-1990s.

Now there’s a new review of the situation titled: Oil’s tipping point has passed. Authors James Murray and David King, in the 26 January 2012 edition of Nature [481, 433–435], maintain that: “the economic pain of a flattening supply [of oil] will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels”. Their argument goes along the line of the Hubbert peak oil theory that the major oil companies have been trying to downplay for the past several years. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: demand v. supply, forecasting, Hubbert theory, peak oil

Jan 30

Counting telecommuters

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One of the most confusing issues about telecommuting is that of establishing the number of telecommuters that exist in the world or in your own country. Part of this is a result of the varying definitions of telecommuting/teleworking; apparently not everyone in the world uses my definitions. For example, is someone who works at home in addition to working at his/her office the same day a telecommuter? My definition would say “no”. That definition, when used in a survey, would produce a lower number than the more inclusive one that allows us both home and in–office work on the same day. You can find more about my definitions elsewhere on this website.

With reservations like this in mind you might want to investigate three new surveys of telecommuters. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: telecommuting statistics, telecommuting surveys, telework/telecommuting definitions

Energy & Environment, Telework/telecommuting

Dec 30

Death by Durban, Part 2

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The Durban climate change meetings are over. The results are in. They are: not much has been resolved. The 2012 expiration date of the Kyoto protocols is unchanged. No new protocol was adopted. Still, there is movement toward a global agreement on climate change sometime around 2020 or so. This agreement would/might include China, India, and other large carbon–emitting nations. But 2020 may be way too late to have the world avoid serious temperature change.

The general impression that this meeting leaves is that, if you feel that action is required now to reduce further global warming, you had better not depend on any government (except maybe the state of California) to make it happen. As I stated in my previous blog on this topic, Mother Nature is indifferent to the actions of mankind. The laws of physics remain in effect regardless of who believes himself in charge. This year, 2011, was again one of the warmest on record with a number of serious weather events. The non-climate disaster in Japan simply added to the toll of misery inflicted on humanity. So, what to do?

Here’s a list of rescue resolutions you might want to make for the coming year: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: climate change conferences, Durban, energy conservation, Kyoto, political pressure

Nov 28

Death by Durban

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Energy & Environment

In 2005 the so-called Kyoto protocol went into force, requiring most of the developed nations to begin serious reductions in their production of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). The protocol was designed to last until the end of 2012. It specifically left out reduction requirements for developing countries such as China, Brazil, and India. The European Union countries began specific and varied steps to implement the protocols; the United States did not.

Today what is supposed to be a determined attempt to expand the Kyoto protocols beyond 2012 begins in Durban South Africa. The outlook for success is not bright. For example, Japan, one of the major leaders in development of the Kyoto protocol, has said that it would not support a second commitment beyond 2012. So what began as an important effort by world governments to slow the rate of global warming is in real danger of suffocating. Rather than taking an energetic step forward, the participants are in danger of death by ennui.
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Tags: climate change conferences, Durban, Kyoto, political pressure

Oct 07

The future after Jobs

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Futures Research

The first and only time I met Steve Jobs was late in the summer of 1976 at a Southern California Computer Society meeting. Among the exhibits there was a table with two hirsute young man behind it. On the table was a circuit board, a power supply, a 9 inch black-and-white monitor, a keyboard, and ribbon cables connecting them together. The two young men, both of them called Steve, demonstrated the power of their scattered–component computer on the 9 inch monitor. They said they were about to begin production of the system. I ask them what they called it. They said it was the Apple I. I told him that they would have to package the parts in a more attractive case if they wanted to sell very many of them.

The rest, as they say, is history. From that humble beginning, in a garage in Northern California, arose one of the world’s most dominant technology firms. Also, that Computer Society meeting inspired me to take a close look at the future of personal computers. A year later I had secured a grant from the National Science Foundation to perform a technology assessment of the personal computer. That assessment, completed in 1978, forecast a rapid expansion of acceptance of personal computers and a concomitant, pervasive impact on almost every aspect of modern society (although with some hitches, as in education).

This was also the beginning of the contest between open and closed personal computer systems. Steve Jobs was among the foremost proponents of closed systems—where the hardware and software were intimately interconnected and designed as a single entity. “It just works.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: future trends, Steve Jobs, technological change, technology and society, the importance of focus

Sep 02

SecDef Telecommutes? Shocking!

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In the 2 September 2011 Los Angeles Times there’s an article titled: Panetta’s commute raises eyebrows. The gist of the story is that many Washingtonians are shocked, shocked that the Secretary of Defense could even consider boarding a U.S. Air Force jet to fly home to California for a three-day weekend. Almost every weekend. Never mind that Panetta’s ranch in the Carmel Valley is fully equipped with the telecommunications technology to allow him to keep in constant touch with the Pentagon 24-7.

What memories this situation arouses in me. Flash back to the mid-1960s when I was still a “rocket scientist” engaged in some highly classified research for the Air Force. In Los Angeles. One afternoon I got a call to brief the Undersecretary of the Air Force at 9:30 the next morning. In the Pentagon. One does not refuse such a request so I dutifully boarded the “redeye” to Washington, arriving the next morning at about 6:30 AM. Upon arriving at the Pentagon I was told that the briefing had been postponed to 2:00 PM. At 1:00 P:M I was told the briefing was cancelled. So I climbed on the evening plane back to LA, never having briefed the Undersecretary. I thought: there must be an easier way.

A short time later I was told that there was a secure color TV link to the Pentagon in an office about 50 meters from my office in LA. Had I been a General I could have used that link instead of making that fruitless and expensive round trip to the Pentagon. To borrow a phrase from Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town: “What a waste of money and time!”

Tags: high-level telecommuting, telecommuting history, telecommuting v. travel costs

Energy & Environment, Telework/telecommuting

Aug 29

Stealth Telecommuting

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At fairly regular intervals I get questions from the media like: “Whatever happened to the great surge in telecommuting that was predicted back in 19xx (or 20xx)?” The reporter usually hadn’t seen any recent stories about telecommuting and therefore (while imagining the headline) leapt to the conclusion that “telecommuting is dead!”

Telecommuting isn’t dead. It’s alive and well, if stealthy.

As a very recent indicator I was listening to NPR this morning as the reporter in Manhattan was describing the return to work of exurban-dwelling workers after the onslaught of Hurricane Irene. The reporter’s words were to the effect that workers seemed to be arriving by bus or car as usual or “maybe they’re telecommuting” (as an explanation of the lower than usual numbers of arrivals). An indication that disaster planning efforts that included telecommuting might actually be in effect in many companies (see some of my earlier blogs to that effect). But who’s counting?

I have also had conversations over the past few years with employees of large corporations on the topic of telecommuting, both formal and informal (stealth). The general telecommuting implementation scenario goes: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: disaster preparedness, forecasts, hot desking, hoteling, office space savings, stealth telecommuting, telecommuters, teleworkers

Energy & Environment, Telework/telecommuting

Jul 25

Carmagedddon v. telecommuting: Part 2

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As I mentioned in my last post, the general media panic about total gridlock in LA during Carmageddon could possibly be a replay of LA during the 1984 Olympic games.

As it turned out, my forecast was right on. Here’s a shot of the I-405 freeway at Sunset Boulevard, near the southern end of the Sepulveda pass, at 2:00 PM the afternoon after the freeway closure.

Carmageddon, Day 1

The only car shown on the freeway is a parked official vehicle. Not only that, all the streets in the immediate area were traveled by only the occasional car. Not only that, the rest of Los Angeles reportedly was also congestion-free. I’d love to say that this wonderful highway emptiness was a result of a sudden interest in telecommuting but this photo was taken on a Saturday, not the usual workday. No, the sudden hiatus mainly was the result of a mass decision to stay home.

The bridge reconstruction that triggered all of this was completed hours ahead of time, on the following Sunday morning. Here’s the freeway, from the same vantage point, on Sunday afternoon, same time.

Carmageddon, Day 2

Still pretty nice, but the freeway had only been open for less than 3 hours when this was taken. The massteria still ruled. But would it last?

Tags: carmageddon, disaster preparedness, gridlock antidotes, management barriers to telecommuting