I think it’s really interesting talking to various people about this idea because of the variety of responses and the variety of psychologies behind the notion that one day this society will not have any offices.
I was just sent this link this morning and it shows some interesting statistics from a recent survey.
http://mashable.com/2011/11/08/work-from-home-2/
The interesting facts are that 70% of students believe that they should have the right to work from home whenever it suits them.
Even more interesting is that 69% of ALL workers believed that the office was unnecessary now, a number which is up from 60% last year.
So the thing I keep coming back to around this idea is the mindset element. It’s blindingly clear that it’s not about the technology, because we already have all the tech to make this happen today.
No, the deep underlying problem with moving forward is deeply rooted in the mindset of those currently who oppose it.
What I find very exciting though is that the overall mindset is shifting faster than I imagined. Just 2months ago I decided that I would start this blog to speared the word on this cause. I thought that the general public perception around the topic was somewhat lower than I had expected.
Studies have shown that this is something society wants. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to make it work.
I’ve also been looking into virtual hosted desktops the last 2days, and what I’ve found has been very exciting. It would seem major providers of servers and mainframes, the kind of companies which supply to large corporations, have mostly cloud services on their home pages, including hosted virtual desktops.
What this tells me is that this is a both a growing market, and corporations are seriously considering these remote alternatives. They just haven’t yet made the final link to global warming and the actual removal of the office space all together.
Perhaps that’s why I’m here.