''Working at Home is a Future Scenario '' -- ThinkingOutLoud DonaldNoyes 20071012 ---- Before the close of this decade, it may be that 25% to 40% or more of the workforce in numbers will be WorkingFromHome, performing 50 to 65 percent of all OfficeWork. At that time automation of manufacturing will mean that half of all workers in this segment will have been replaced by robots and automated production lines. Most of those remaining in this segment will be involved in the design, upgrade and transitioning of products and the lines producing the products as well as the scheduling, distribution and marketing of the produced items. Those WorkingFromHome will be able to extend their involvement starting from the age of 12 to 14 and extending useful contributions well into their 80s. Cities will be reshaped into new formations which will be connected with various transportation networks varying from highways as we know them today to arteries more like conduits and channels where products will "flow", rather than be carried by wheeled vehicles. Those who reside in these Cities of the future will find themselves no more than "walking distance" from their places of economic and social commerce. "RushHours" will disappear as working hours will be distributed evenly through the entire "TwentyFourHours" of the day. Roadways will be found to have nearly constant and even use. ThePairAndShareWorkplace will allow for smooth interchange of operations, traffic, workers and workflow so that mechanisms, spaces and transporters will be in continual use except for scheduled downtime for maintenance and upgrading. What we presently know of as CityPlanning will be radically changed so that the lines formerly segregating and separating areas as exclusively existing as "zones" will become "networks" which will "connect" commerce and residences using boundaries which will will provide necessary "buffers" providing both isolation and insulation from effects found to be "subtractive" from the well ordered use of each and both spaces. The exchanges and interchanges between the activites and business of "Production" from the activities and business of "Consumption" will be aided by the existance of interfaces which will be "virtual" as well as "physical". Evolving in a "FreelySelectable" environment which will become as society "evolves" as a result. The existing of WorkableAndEfficientVirtualSocialEnvironments will make the change or "rollover" of "WorkersWorkingAndTheWorkplace" and allow for WorkingFromHome to occur rapidly and naturally. It will occur from the "BottomUp" rather than being an edict from the "TopDown". New Businesses formed which utilize this "Paradigm" will succeed when workers who desire this change of workplace will "make themselves available", perhaps first as "part-time" trial participants, becoming "fully-participating" at the exclusion of the former "commutative employment". Those who are concerned about "the environment, green-house gases, and global-warming" should be able to see this as a major element in any "serious" attempt to deal with "the problem". It would focus on whether one chooses to remove themselves as one contributing to "the problem" and places themselves as contributing to the solution to "the problem". VirtualShopping will allow the distribution of products from SelectableContainingSpaces between "products" of the "producers", and the "extraction or consumption" by the "consumers" with an agreed upon "economic exchange" being made between each. ---- Related: * TeleCommuting * PairProgrammingAtHome * WritingCodeAtHome * DistributedSoftwareDevelopment * WorkingWhileTravelling ---- CategoryFuture