This isn’t really about flying cars, but it is about the things that we should have but don’t. Like flying cars.

As I checked weather.com yesterday, I noticed that there were two purple blobs on the map of the US. One indicated heavy snowfall in upstate New York and the other indicated the same for my location.

I heaved a heavy sigh. The exasperation had to do with the very idea that I chose to live in the South for a very good reason: the weather is mild, at least as far as the temperature is concerned. I hate snow and I hate cold weather. There are many reasons for this, which I will not go into, but those of you who also hate cold weather most likely have a list similar to mine. Just suffice it say that snow is pretty… to look at. Beyond that, it’s a huge pain.

It is a well known idea that humans tend to be tribal in nature and thus will live and die within 25 miles of where they were born. This isn’t a rule, obviously, but a noticed trend. In fact, the CIA used to count gravestones in spy photos as a way of estimating current populations of areas, relying on the idea that people live and die close to where they were born.

This idea leads me to the personal conclusion that the distribution of population in the United States is based not upon where people prefer to live, but rather where their parents lived. I imagine that in the early days of settling the nation, people found that it was easier to deal with the cold weather of New England and have mild summers rather than deal with the heat of Southern summers to get the mild winters. Well, these days, we have air conditioning. We even have it in our horseless carriages. So, I can only surmise that the people living above 35 degrees north latitude only do so because that’s where they were born.

In any case, as I sat in blizzard-induced traffic, two things occurred to me.

1) Where’s my flying car? Weren’t we promised flying cars by, oh, the late 50s? What’s the holdup? There have been prototypes for many decades now. Why is this such a difficult thing?

I just saw on the Discovery Channel (or the History Channel, or the Learning Channel, or somewhere) that there is a new U.S. Navy UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that is a helicopter. And this one can be completely autonomous! Most UAVs have a pilot somewhere dozens or hundreds of miles away playing, to his or her perspective, MS Flight Simulator. But this new UAV can be programmed to fly itself!

So, if we can create a vehicle that can take off and land vertically, completely autonomously, why can’t we create such a vehicle that is easy enough for the average commuter to fly?

2) Okay, if I can’t have my flying car, why can’t I telecommute?

This was the real question in my mind. I love my car and I love to drive it. I would love even more to have one that flies! But barring that, why can’t I work in the same place that I live?

For most people, it is the other way around. They live in the same town that they work. But in this day and age, people change jobs far more frequently than they used to. And it is very easy to lose your job and find that the only acceptable new job is one that is in another town, or another state.

My own personal experience is sort of in the middle. I got laid off a few months ago and the only acceptable positions I could find would be as a traveling consultant. So, whereas I didn’t have to move from my warm climate, I still have to leave it for 5 days every week. And I have very little choice in the destination.

But cast your memory back a few years… a dozen or so. Weren’t there large promises of vast numbers of telecommuters? Weren’t nearly all of us going to be taking meetings in our pajamas and working in virtual offices that brought people together, electronically, from all over the country. All over the world?

I am in a high-tech industry. The majority of what I do can be done wherever there is a PC. On nearly any PC. And the results can be uploaded via the internet to their production habitats to execute all happy and secure. And hopefully error-free.

So why am I, of all people, forced to sit in a car, stuck in traffic, in a snowstorm, when the apartment that I am paying for is dry and snow-free and far warmer than the balmy 8 degrees outside?

The answer: fuddy-duddies.

That’s right: fuddy-duddies. The truth of my situation is that my supervisor is very forward-minded. He believes that telecommuting is a good thing and a good idea. But, as he says, his isn’t the final word on the matter. See, there are people out there that have these, in my opinion, outdated ideas of what makes a business successful. From the idea that wearing a blue suit made IBM’s employees better than others to the idea that many businesses still require suits and ties for their personnel, whether or not they interact with anyone outside of that company or not. Yes, it’s true. There are people that sit in their cubicles all day long and still have to wear ties! Say it isn’t so!

As time goes on, this phenomenon is growing increasingly rare. But I am flabbergasted at how slowly progress of this type moves along.

I, for one, am hoping for a big push in legislation to make telecommuting beneficial. After all, think of all the bonuses! I am not going to get into the Global Warming debate, but I think people on both sides of that commotion can agree that whether or not a reduction in polluting emissions will halt or reverse the climate’s trends, it is still a good thing. If we don’t have to drive into the office every day, that saves on gasoline (reduction in petroleum usage) and reduces auto emissions. Offices can be smaller and use less energy to heat and cool (more reduction in energy usage). There will be fewer traffic incidents with fewer people on the road and there will be fewer rush hour traffic jams (great reduction in emissions and petroleum usage).

But there are also benefits to the business itself. Workers will be happier. Workers will also be healthier, since the ability to eat food that’s been prepared at home will be afforded, rather than the ease of fast food joints close to the office.

There will also be a reduction in expenses. As a consultant, my expenses get billed to the client. They have to pay for my flights, my rental car, my hotel, and my food. That adds up to around $1,500-2,000 per week, but could all be eliminated if I could work from home. Heck, for that much money, they could hire an additional telecommuter.

Salaries could even be reduced. Whereas this might be an unpopular idea with most of us, the fact is that very many people have a car primarily for their commute to work. Many families have two cars, one of which is solely for travel to the office. Imagine that without a necessity to drive to an office every day, the need for a car diminishes quite a bit, and the two-car families that I mentioned now would only really need one car. And gas and maintenance costs would be reduced. Add that all up and the cost of just being an employed human in society becomes reduced. With that, a reduction in salary can be realized. Eating at home tends to be less expensive than eating out as well, so that could be taken into account.

What about other costs that employers and employees bear? Wouldn’t they be reduced as well? How about healthcare? Many people get sick because they mix with germ pools that they haven’t before and contract the illness. With workers staying home, they will be less likely to catch their cubicle-farm-neighbor’s cold. And with reduced pollution, people will have fewer respiratory illnesses. Less commuting means less injurious accidents. And, assuming the average commute is 30 minutes one-way, telecommuters will have an extra hour in the day to do whatever they wish, reducing rush-hour-induced stress. Heck, some may even use that hour to exercise. Or spend time with their families. Or get more work done.

The downside to telecommuting is that many of us are lazy. Heck, I hold it as a statute that the best programmers must be lazy; it’s what makes them want to write better code. But the problem is that a lot of people will not be as diligent in their duties if they are not physically supervised. There is the tendency to set up the home office with amenities such as TV and radio and XBox. This is a very real issue, and one I am say I am confident would make telecommuting dangerously unworkable for me (I am ultra-lazy and love my XBox).

But there has to be a way around this. Surely there is. There could always be training on the methods for working from home and being productive. I am sure that someone could become very rich studying the habits of highly-effective telecommuters and teaching others to be the same.

As well, employers could adopt and develop a strategy of goal-based workmanship, even compensation. I know a great many people who would love the opportunity to affect their income positively by being more productive. The trouble is that their work week is based on a certain number of hours and not a certain number of widgets produced. So, they resolve to be on-the-job for their 40 hours, regardless of what gets accomplished, and that’s how they proceed. But if a telecommuter could dictate his or her own level of productivity, or demonstrate their productivity, in some means other than hours worked per week, I think we would see people be just as effective, if not more so, than they are sitting in an office.

As well, there is the idea that a happy worker is a productive worker. If someone would be happier working from home (or from Starbuck’s, or the beach, or the park, or wherever they can go and be happy while still being able to do their work), then it stands to reason that they would be more productive. I hold it as another tenet that good programmers will jump on a task and be tenacious with it as long as they enjoy the work. So, the laziness of good programmers can be offset easily by giving them task-oriented goals. In the end, I know I am way happier with goals of this nature. I would rather be told, “Get this project done by the 15th” than to be told “I want you here every day for 10 hours a day until this is finished.” Under the first method, I might be a little lazy on the details, waking up at 9:00, taking leisurely lunches, etc. but making sure to get the project done by the 10th, just so that I have wiggle room for any unforeseen issues. Under the second method, I would grumble a lot, and would see my presence as more important than my productivity, and the project’s quality would surely reflect that.

And, as mentioned, if workers could even set their own compensation levels based on output, I think employers would see people double or triple their efforts to get things accomplished if it meant bigger bonuses or higher pay.

All in all, I believe telecommuting is a win-win scenario. We just need to convince the fuddy-duddies that it can work.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 9:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized.