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This light-hearted, humorous chapter predicts the future. It is written
by the author of The Economics of Teleworking, as if looking back from the
future to the present day. It makes some
interesting forecasts and speculates on where telework will lead society. The
references, map and facts it contains about the present are reliable data.
A SERIOUSLY FUNNY FUTURE.. 1
Its a funny old World.. 3
The Resurrection of Russia. 4
The Birth of Telework 1980-1992. 5
Berlin gave a lead. 7
Hearth & Home & Work may not mix. 9
GRIDLOCK. 10
Status & Information Technology. 12
Every Job is Teleworked -
Statistics from 1999 to 2015. 12
MAP OF STATISTICS. 15
Banking on Automation and Saint Margaret 17
Tax Havens - Off-Planet Companies. 19
The Lost City of Chartered Accountants. 21
LEGALOPOLIS - THE CITY OF LAWYERS. 22
slide 8 – THE CITY OF LAWYERS. 24
Truth from Fiction. 26
The Transition
from an Industrial to an Information Society.
Multi-Media History Lecture Module 8 - The growth of
telework in Europe.
.
Delivered by Mr Noel Hodson via
IntelSat on 21st January 2021, to students, attending the International Cyberspace University of Europe.
(Download speech, text,
graphics and video, in any language, for 5euro$. Say INTERNET,
MMLM8-ICUE-HODSON to your Intel-implant-chip & specify language at the
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21st
January 2021
From 1988 to 2008 the rapid growth of telework in Western Europe surpassed the most optimistic contemporary forecasts as it swept across
the European Union, forcing radical economic, fiscal and monetary changes upon
the traditional feudal structures that still persisted in those last decades of
the 20th century. In order for today’s ever increasing 400 million
teleworkers to be able to live anywhere on the planet, several key,
unquestioned paradigms that governed lives back in 1999, had to be changed.
These included; the daily commute to and from work; the concept of bosses and
employees; quaint military style rules about clothes and haircuts; hundreds of
different languages; fixed national borders - often guarded; thousands of local
financial systems - anonymously controlled and unaccountable; immense
differences in job-rates around the world; widely varied national taxes - and
tax havens; dozens of incompatible computer and telephony systems; and
primitive, exclusive class, caste and religious systems. We shall examine the history of the changes
wrought by the Information Society and see how from 1999 to 2021 the current
teleworking conditions came into being.
First, we need to look at an Industrial Economy that exemplified the
transition from an Industrial to an Information Society. Russia, the World’s largest country, only grew to be the wealthiest and most
powerful economy in Europe after it spanned its vast land masses with optic laser broadband telecommunication
networks and capitalised massively on the fabled Boris Yeltsin Resurrection
Phenomenon.
When Boris (The Eternal) Yeltsin seemed to die for the third time in May
2001 and was yet again resurrected, appeared on CNN and sacked his Prime Minister
and entire government for the fifteenth time, the miracle was ascribed to the
healing properties of Pure Russian Chernobyl Vodka (PRCV). Within days, the
global demand for PRCV was so great that the price per bottle hit 26 thousand
Euro. Governments around the world ditched their gold reserves and bought PRCV,
making it the world’s hardest currency. PRCV Bonds and Futures Certificates
underpinned the global financial system until Vatican
hagiographers in 2007 pronounced the event a fake. It was found that Mr.
Yeltsin had in fact died in 1989, his body had been preserved in alcohol and
his later TV appearances were the work of the Soviet Academy of Morticians & Film Animators. However, by 2007, Russia had wisely used its PRCV exports to re-build its advanced
communications infrastructure and its economy and had overtaken the USA and the EU in telework and electronic commerce.
Throughout the chaotic decade of 1988-2008, Russia’s 150 million people barely survived and came late to the Information
Age. Their vast natural resources of oil, gas, tritium, hydro-electricity,
agriculture and Vodka were neglected and under-utilised. Electronic transactions were near impossible.
For example, in 1998 Professor Dr. Josef Hochgerner, a telearbeit expert from
Vienna [1][1],
drove hundreds of miles to meet a Russian academic colleague to hand over cash
for an EC sponsored project, because Russian banks were more likely to steal
the Euros than to complete an electronic transfer. Communications equipment was
very scarce; for example in 1999, Rostov University owned only two aged desk-top computers. Moscow University was hardly better equipped with limited access to the Internet. But,
when the KGB were privatised in a joint-venture with George Soros, they sold vital
technology to Russia, creating the modern wireless telephony system. Reliable cyberspace
global banks handled the ordinary citizens’ transactions securely and, with the
advantage of the latest technologies, Russia leapfrogged from Industry to Electronics into the dominant economic
position in Europe.
Telework, or telecommuting, started 40 years ago in 1980 when Jack
Nilles at the state traffic authority in California realised that around the
World, every work-day, about 450 million people travelled an average ten
kilometres to work, taking about an hour, and every evening, before supper,
they all travelled back again - for another hour. The weight of the vehicles
used to transport these hapless commuters was more than 500 million tonnes. If
parked on a square kilometre, the vehicles would form a stack six kilometres
high, about the height of Mount
Everest - wobbling precariously
on its wheels, propelled on its daily 20 kilometres round trip by poorly
refined rock-oil. Jack Nilles[2][2],
Alvin Tofler, Gil Gordon [3][3]
and other pioneers realised that this gargantuan, polluting, costly morning and
evening commuting ritual was not the best way to organise work. They promoted
the concept of “taking the work to the people, not the people to the
work”. My own early work identified the
most powerful economic rationale, namely that every hour per work day saved
from non-productive activities, such as commuting, was equivalent to 30
eight-hour work days a year[4][4].
Typically a teleworker converted from full time commuting to full time at home
gave an extra 30 work-days to their employer and gained 40 work-days extra
leisure and family time. This was the logic for the “effortless increase in
productivity” experienced by most teleworkers.
But ten years later, in 1990, both in the EU and the USA, telework and telecommuting hardly existed and were not even featured
on Microsoft’s ABC Spell-Checker; which in those days ranked as the highest
scientific proof of its total non-existence. In the UK, in 1988, surveys commissioned by British Telecom showed just a few
hundred teleworkers among a 27 million workforce. In Germany, France, Italy, Spain and most of Europe, telework was unknown. But a societal explosion was about to occur -
the Electronic or Quiet Revolution had amassed its troops and now launched its
attack. Promoted by visionaries in the
European Commission, including Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann, and in
the State owned telephone companies, the Information Society was being born.
Berlin gave a lead
Germany, recognising the road to the future, hosted The First European
Telework Assembly[5][5]
on “New Ways to Work” at the then empty Reichstag building in Berlin, in
November 1994; a gathering of 300 elected representatives and telework
promoters (n.b. the reunited German government moved from Bonn to Berlin in
1999). But Germany was hampered in adopting telework by some of the highest telephone call
charges in Europe. The Berlin conference was addressed by another visionary thinker and author,
Professor Charles Handy[6][6],
who urged the European socio-economic juggernaut to signal its engine room to
start changing direction. Prof. Handy illustrated his advice with an Irish tale
of a traveller asking for directions. “Go
down this road….”, the Irishman told the traveller, “…….for a few miles. Go
through the woods, up the hill and down into the valley beyond. After a tall
pine tree you’ll come to a pub. Beyond the pub you’ll see a little stone bridge
over a pretty rill. “ The traveller
nodded attentively and jotted down the instructions. “Two miles before the bridge …” continued the Irishman confidently, “….. you turn Left!”. Prof. Handy reminded the conference
that if society waits until it reaches the bridge, it would be too late to turn
left - action for change was needed immediately.
The Mayor of Berlin welcomed the technology enabled trend towards
flexible and tele-working but she expressed concern for the impact on home and
family life if people stopped going out to work. Baroness Seaar summing up the conference, echoed the Mayor’s
concerns saying that in her youth, when men went out to work and women stayed
at home, ladies were very clear about family & work boundaries, vowing that
“we may marry them for Better or for Worse ------ but not for Lunch”.
A study by marital psychotherapist Pauline Hodson following her paper
“Bringing Home the Electronic Baby” [7][7]1996,
cited the case of a husband who switched from daily commuting to working at
home. His clear thinking wife banned him from the house for set hours each day,
on the basis that real men were not at home at such times. He would often stand
outside in the rain until she allowed him back into the house.
The new societal protocols that evolved between 1999 and 2005 (work
sponsored by the Dublin Foundation for Living and Learning[8][8]) & (see publications of The Work,
Information, Society and Employment[ W.I.S.E.] Forum,
Austria on new ways of working[9][9])
helped to resolve these difficult primitive spatial and territorial issues -
giving rise to the present enlightened understanding for people working at
home. For example, deciding who should change the baby’s dirty nappies, who
should load the washing machine and how to reserve time on the home
Global-Video-Conferencing-Suite - all in a harmonious marital atmosphere of
sweetness and understanding.
The Car Commute was King until the 2003 Gridlock Catastrophe
Family adjustments were the least of the barriers experienced by early
teleworkers. Many traditional employers abhorred the new regime and resisted
any changes to the status quo. In 1993, the Chief Executive Officer of a 200
man UK consultant engineering firm (most engineers were men in those far
distant days) when asked to reconsider the role of the company car,
instinctively grabbed the startled telework adviser by his tie and tried to
throttle him.
The company car was then the prime status symbol of workplace hierarchy.
In Europe, more than in America, cars were given to employees. They could cost as much as a house; were
built to carry 5 or 6 people at up to 180kph; though they rarely carried more
than one person at more than 50kph; lasted on average 5,500 days and spent 98%
of that time on display in the company car park. Seniority was evident from the weight and
size of the car awarded. Middle managers had 1,500 kilo Fords or Renaults, of
7sq metres. Senior managers flaunted Mercedes of up to 2,000 kilo and 12sq metres;
while Board Directors might have a 2,800 kilo Bentley Mulsanne or Mercedes 600
that occupied 17sq metres of road space.
The company car was finally dropped as a status symbol after the Great
European Gridlock in November 2003, when an estimated 180 million vehicles took
to Europe’s roads simultaneously between 4pm and 5pm, in fog. It took five days of airlifting vehicles from crossroads and
roundabouts before traffic could move again; and burned an estimated 90 billion
litres of fuel as drivers tried to keep themselves warm or air-conditioned.
33,000 people died in their cars, which was considered a tragedy until
it was realised it matched the statistical normal death-rate and that in fact
they should be celebrating that 150,000 fatal road accidents had been avoided.
The surface of the Route Peripherique, in Paris, was torn up for missiles by furious Frenchmen missing their dinners,
breakfasts and lunches. It was later recognised that, by an esoteric
existential mechanism understood only by French philosophers, the road surface
had actually been improved by the event.
The Autostrada del Sol, a private
toll road, remained closed for five years with all the vehicles locked in,
while Italian courts considered claims by the owners against drivers for
blocking the road - and by drivers against the owners for not keeping traffic
moving. The loss of productive time
across Europe and the costs of parachuting in food, water and mobile toilets to
stranded drivers caused the 2004 recession and temporary collapse of the global
financial system.
Now, of course, status in 2021 is indicated by home-office equipment,
access levels at the Cyberspace-Office-Head-Quarters and by how many
youth-rejuvenation-programmes the company provides. The most successful executives
at the top of the hierarchy are typically 86 years old, look about 25, and have
300 tetra-bytes of RAM surgically implanted under their scalps, linked by an
optic fibre aerial to the company Intranet. Though young looking, they tend to
be a little bit creaky over the 100 metre hurdles and swallow a handful of Viagra-Super-Megaboost-Plus before they go
out on a date.
As history confirms, the family problems and resistance from traditional
managers were eventually overcome and the telework population grew rapidly as
computer-telephony halved in price and doubled in power every two years. By
2000, at the turn of the Millennium, there were over 15 million USA teleworkers,[10][10]
over 4 million UK teleworkers[11][11],
and 4 million mainland Western
Europe teleworkers[12][12]. The implications for Europe
were that 8 million or more computer-home-offices had been equipped, almost all
with Internet access provided by the employers (including about 25% self-employed).
From UK and USA surveys it can be assumed that about 25% of the computer-home-offices
were used on any one work-day; giving the bases for calculating the impact on
road and telephone traffic[13][13].
These numbers were tangentially confirmed in a 1999 survey by NOKIA,[14][14]
then the largest mobile phone maker on Earth, that showed: - on March 31st
1999. Mobile Phone Subscriptions - Finland 62%; Norway 52% - Sweden 49% -
Iceland 42% - Denmark 41% - Italy 39% - Portugal 36% - Luxembourg 35% - Austria
31% - Switzerland 27% - Ireland 26% - Netherlands 26% - Greece 24% - France 21%
- Spain 21% - Belgium 21% - Germany 19%. (n.b. at that time, Deutsche Telecom
call charges were still the highest in Europe,
discouraging use of the telephone). Numbers of mobile phone subscribers were
growing at 70% per annum. Here lay the seeds for the modernisation, skipping
the wired stage, of Russia, Eastern Europe and other parts of the World where wired telephone networks had been
under-developed.
The most reliable telework statistics for 1998 were gathered by the
European Commission project DIPLOMAT, the European Charter for Telework.
Displayed on a map, using the old pre-Union political boundaries that existed
at the time, the picture was as below:-
Note - This map dates from 1999, before the formal reunification of East
and West Europe brought Russia and CEEC into the European Union and when the traditional political
boundaries still existed. Today, in
2021, the citizens’ groupings and devolved governments are complex and
constantly changing. Students - see - INTERNET-REGIONAL-DEVOLVED-GOVERNMENTS to
access maps which detail the 344 (in June 2021) devolved regional governments
within the European Union umbrella.
What the 1999 figures revealed was a large difference between the
national statistics for teleworkers and the industry statistics for mobile
phones. Given that the majority of
mobile phones were then owned by people who had jobs, even allowing for the
1999 fashion for children and vulnerable older people to be given a mobile
phone, it would seem that the extraordinary increase in workplace
communications mobility was not being regarded by statisticians as “location
free, advanced communications enabled working” - one of the definitions of
teleworking then in vogue. This difference was hardly surprising as the rate of
change was so fast that no institutions and very few individual observers could
keep pace with it.