I was talking to The Dutchman the other night. We were doing our usual Monty Python take on life as we discussed the Prime Ministers recent faux pas. Thank goodness for a guy that makes me smile. Oh that's Dutch, not Gordon by the way. Whilst I am on the subject of our Gordon. If in doubt mate, don't bloody smile, I get worried that one of those 'Invasion of The Body snatchers' has buggered off with you!
Dutch has had a bit of bad news recently and explained to me that a high speed rail link was going to be built 200 yards from his meadow on a high concrete plinth. I expressed my sympathy, in the form of 'big barbed wire pants'....erm, sorry this is how silly our humour gets. Anyway, this led to a discussion about whether the rail link would be built for people or freight. We both agreed that by the time it reared its ugly plinth, it would be freight...or should be.
My dozy, underused brain then kicked in. 'Hang on Dutch, shouldn't we all be sat at home, in our Jammie's, working from our home offices by then?' said I ' Erm actually WHY aren't we working from home NOW in our Jammie's?' The train (oops.. pardon the pun) of thought tailed off as the rusty cogs of my mind whirred. Why are we still commuting to work?
Dutch reminded me of the facts. A few years ago, if you had been intent on working from home and establishing a home office you would have had to apply for 'change of use', planning permission from the Great God Planning Department. Apparently a Government directive was sent out some time ago to the relevant Planning Offices, decreeing that, if anyone were to apply for that particular change of use, the Planning Office should turn a blind eye, as this was to be encouraged.
Finding my brain at last I asked Why? this had not been taken further. 'Our current Internet would not be able to support the demand that was placed on it' said he. I could not believe this. I questioned him. 'Why not, that is ridiculous, this is 2010 and I can talk to anyone in the world, that is utterly bonkers!' No, he is right. I mean if people buying tickets for Glastonbury/V Festival etc...etc can crash the Net then it seems that our Internet in this country is in its infancy.
Being a technophobe I assumed that our WWW was so new and shiny that we did not have the 'technology' and would have to wait some years before we caught up with North Korea. Apparently not. It is perfectly possible to do this now. We can work from home, we CAN go to Tesco in our Jammie's, we don't have to hang out of attic window, dangling the Orange Dongle. The ISP's of this nation are 'Having a Laugh'! Money grabbing Bastards!
We can bypass the phone lines and use our mains power supply instead. Think how much simpler that would make things. Now far be it for me to engage you in matters technical as I am a bit of a blondie but really!!!! how long is this crap going to go on? I may be over simplifying but as I understand it, the modems we would have to use to make this viable would be more expensive but smack that expense against your petrol, parking, train tickets (sorry Dutch), childcare, lunches, psychiatrist bills and it becomes nothing. Zero, Zilch, Nada!
Problem is, my mind now refuses to give up on this. Being a good Donut child, I should not be thinking about what the Government would lose in, Petrol, VAT, congestion charge etc...etc... but that is but a very small part of it. Somehow I can't let it go. Let me put a different spin on this. I have Blogged about the fantastic revolution the WWW has brought about and one of the quotes I used was "Internet: absolute communication, absolute isolation.". My Blog explored how we, as a society, might deal with that technology but I think it runs much deeper than that.
If we were to work from home, be more flexible, more forward thinking and less institutionalised then I believe a brighter society would develop. Don't panic, I am not on LSD (can't get the stuff these days anyway, she sniffs) and my name is not Huxley but when you really think about it this could be fantastic for us. To be free of the terrible 9 to 5 responsibility that drives our too short lives could be a revelation.
I am not trying to preach to you, just hoping to make you think and embrace new ideas. No doubt many of us would take our Jammie's very seriously, get hooked on daytime TV and do no work. Some of us would lament at not being able to snog the office hottie and photocopy our bums at the Christmas shindig. Adulterous office magnets would be made to behave as the beady eyes of their children would be upon them.
Others would be able to choose their lifestyle without having to bugger off to Oz, France (never understood that myself). Yes, yes, I can hear you shouting from here, I have now got myself in an awful lot of hot water. Doesn't hurt to think though....does it?? Now think about it and engage! I would love to hear your thoughts.
Be Careful Out There
Muse x
PS Will someone please delete the exclamation mark on my keyboard. I am dreadfully drawn to the damn thing!
Most of us could work from home using the existing internet infrastructure - if we don't need to send and receive huge amounts of data. If we all became musicians or video editors, the net might slow down. The big demand is for leisure: video streaming etc. Astute conspiracy theorists would see a Govt interest in encouraging us to work from home, sending all our thoughts, plans and dreams in ways that donut techies find easy to read.
ReplyDeleteSo the real resistance will travel on foot (fewer cameras on the Ridgeway- apart from where if goes through the Chequers estate) murmuring messages to each other in windy woodlands (nothing like a good breeze to fox a mic).
Did you ever read "Rogue Male" ?
And thinking of surveillance in the woods - I hope it's not just a myth from the 60s that when the CIA dropped radio mics into the forests of the Ho Chi Minh trail, there was panic when they heard the deep rumbling and clanking that just had to be armoured vehicles rolling south. Except that it was just the bicyles the NVA used to carry stuff - they had run out of rubber for tyres, and were on bare wheelrims. Technical intelligence :)
Thanks Charlie. The can of worms, opens ever wider and yes you are quite right the multi million pound new building in Donut town would probably have to add a couple of extra floors if we all worked from home! :-)
ReplyDelete