Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Home Office

I do believe and hope in the near future, a good portion of many people's work will be done from home. With the accessibility of the internet and communication tools such as IM, ftp sites, video conferencing and such, distance will not be so much of an issue. Conference call programs, such as Web-Ex, are progressing fast, and the practicality of video conferencing is getting much better. I am also seeing trends in the design programs of my field of architecture allowing their subscribers to install their programs on one's home computer, as well as their office computer.

The benefits of working at home are multi-faceted. first, you will not have to commute to work everyday, saving gas and time in traffic (not to mention the environment). Offices will not have to spend the electricity their employee's might otherwise use at work. They may not even require as many work space, as employees would be more willing to have a smaller workspace or share one on a rotation, if they are only coming in a few days a week. Of course, the great fear is that efficiency or productivity will decrease significantly, as employee's working from home many not indeed be working, or they may be distracted by other goings on at home.

I feel that programs may be developed to solve this problem. employees can check into a server like a punch clock, and supervisors can use remote access to see their employee's screen, and can tell if they are working or not. The overseer program might even raise a flag if nothing has been done in a few minutes. At the end of the day, the employee's production should speak of their own work ethic. This may also make it more likely that employers will reward good productivity, rather than implied productivity, or extended presence.

Electronic Government

In my mind, the internet has the capability of bringing power back to the people more directly. Of course the most serious problem with electronic voting is security, and error prevention, as these could have major consequences. Best to start small and develop the program and give it more responsibility as security and errors become less of a concern.

I say, start out with home owners associations and allow every member to vote on decisions instead of the board. This will make people more involved in their complex, and make it less influence by an individual's preferences. Hopefully this program would make it's way to the national level where people could vote directly for president I don't know why we don't already). But we could also vote on bills in congress. This would mean that every citizen would take more interest in politics, as they can be an active part of it. They will vote directly for bills and measures they care about, and abstain from those they don't. Of course, education about politics (as well as argument and logic) will become more important. I can't fathom what congressmen's jobs will be, or how we can vote on a secret measure, but i am sure that it would work itself out in time.

One interesting idea would be bill written as wikis. One fear might be that the masses are not as informed as congress and will not make as wise of decisions. However, I believe that people would only vote on those issues that they are interested in, and presumably know something about (at least as well as the politicians do). I think the people's collective intelligence will far outweigh the average congressman's on any given subject. One thing that would be very different, though I am not sure it would be a bad thing, is politicking. 300 million peoplecannot make deals for certain agendas, although writing bills as wikis might solve this problem.

Cell Phone GPS

As technology advance, the use of cell phones will become much greater. They might encompass all your personal information, effectively becoming your ID, driver's license, social security card etc. It could also be your debit and credit card. You would no longer have to carry around these cards, simply sign up for the program, and download your information to your cell phone.

Cell Phones are already becoming cameras, hard drives, music players and video players. One could simply add video messaging with GPS installed. You could track your kids, know where your spouse is, or see if your friends are nearby, or at home. Of course all these settings will be adjustable for privacy. However, it will hopefully put a damper of cheating spouses and wayward children. Obviously it could help with missing persons, as authorities might have privacy overrides (insert political fears here).

Also GPS phones could give you directions from where you are at to your destination on foot or by car. This might also help you if you are lost. They could also download websites about your location or stats about it. Dating services might allow you to see if a potential date is nearby, or you could program your phone to tell you if any of your friends are within a mile of you. Police could track criminals down, who would be reluctant to abandon their phones, as it has their ID and cash on it. In fact, vigilantes might have their means suspended, and people on probation could be much more easily monitored. Traffic stats would be easy to compute, and advertising could be directed towards your demographic in stores and on the road. Music and art preferences could follow you around in any smart house, and light could automatically turn on and off when you enter or leave a room.

As GPS gets cheaper and smaller, I see us putting them on our cars to prevent theft, on our pets (and other animals for research), perhaps even on children and our keys so we won't lose them (or will our keys also be a part of our cell phone?) Obviously, privacy will be a central issue, and settings will have to be adjustable. But as long as the people's and state's rights are clearly defined, I think it will make our society much more efficient.

The Point

Ok, so you may ask, "Why is Scott starting a blog? I don't think his life is that interesting. What is he going to talk about?" Well, the scary truth is that what I am mostly going to talk about is what goes on inside my head. I have too many ideas that are forever lost because I never put them down anywhere. And because I have no inkling to make money off any of these ideas, and I would rather see them done than no, I'll go ahead and put them out there.

Many of these ideas may not be original, but at least they are original to me, or what I think should happen. With all these things in mind, remember not to take this all too seriously. Enjoy.