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> Given the possibility of remote work, [...] urban centers. Even HN doesn't yet seem to be discussing the impact of coming VR/AR on people's geographic distri

> Given the possibility of remote work, [...] urban centers. Even HN doesn't yet seem to be discussing the impact of coming VR/AR on people's geographic distribution. Perhaps it's still too low profile? Eye tracking; facial expression tracking (researchy); foveated rendering reducing GPU requirements; inexpensive laptops with discrete GPUs; HMDs with monitor-like angular resolution; inexpensive finger tracking (hopefully)... perhaps it's easy to not notice these if you're not tracking the tech? Easy to think "remote work, so video conferencing, so limited impact - far better to do open plan offices"? Instead of "the practice and spatial constraints of software development will change dramatically over the next half decade".

memebox3v 9y ago
Or for that matter self driving cars. You could commute for 5 hours a day, spend 2 hours in the office and go home again. All while being productive. That greatly increases the commutable range. Then you have the prospect of self driving Motor homes, moving with the work becomes that much easier.
- kaybe 9y ago
  How will we be able to do this without fossil fuels?
- mncharity 9y ago
  People take commuter buses with wifi, from Pennsylvania to NYC, with a 2 to 4 hour round trip. A few commute Boston to NYC on Amtrak Acela, with a 7-ish hour round trip (you can stand up and walk around, get coffee, etc).
dwighttk 9y ago
I don't understand what problem VR/AR is solving in your hypothetical.
- falcor84 9y ago
  Not the OP, but I've been thinking about this a lot recently. The problem is that telecommuting is currently very limited by technology. You can currently only transport your voice and a single video view, while collaborating over a single view from a monitor. You end up missing on very many of the modalities available in the real world. But my vision of what work and study could be like with good VR is The Magic School Bus. Assume that every time you an your colleagues wanted to do work on any domain, you would be transported into a hi-fi all-senses-included representation of that domain, which provides a perfect sense of presence. That technology is still quite far away, but once we're there, it would be significantly better than just being in a room with them. And the world would be forever changed.
  - dwighttk 9y ago
    so: constricted communication bandwidth?
    - SmooL 9y ago
      That's one way to describe it, a better way might be that's its not bandwidth that limits remote working communication, but just a lack of features. To loop this back to the topic at hand, the idea is that you need people in the same space to work effectively. That idea forces collections of people (cities) and drives up the value of the land (a fixed commodity). Having technology that removes the need to have the workforce physically opens up vast amounts of relatively cheap land to live on.
      - dwighttk 9y ago
        I think the efficiency gain from cities is more than just some people working in a single company, but all sorts of logistical savings. Perhaps my imagination isn't big enough, but I just don't see VR replacing dasein as it were.
        mncharity 9y ago
jpao79 9y ago
Or maybe even just an always-on video setup. Basically use the following innovations to connect an office in SF with one in Fresno: 1.) MIT Stanford Wormhole http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/08/22/wormhole_links_mit_and_stanford/ http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/... The designers of the installation, who call it the wormhole, say it is meant to encourage random encounters between students and staff at two of the country’s premier technology-oriented universities. Someone at MIT’s Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences, hungry for lunch and conversation, will be able to chat under the dome with a stranger who’s grabbing a morning coffee in Stanford’s Huang Engineering Center. Casual meetings can be held at the wormhole. New ideas may be spurred, new science inspired. 2.) Google Fiber 3.) 200 inch LED video wall https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/07/samsung-4k-146-inch-microled-wall-ces-2018/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/07/samsung-4k-146-inch-micr...
- mncharity 9y ago
  > Or maybe even just an always-on video Or perhaps video in addition to XR? HMDs don't entirely play well with eyes (at least until we get adaptive optics or light fields), so I want to give my eyes a break periodically. A video wall in the kitchen would permit a "let's take a break" conversation with a non-local colleague. The power of the XR argument, is that if your ideal development environment is XR, and your ideal collaboration context is via XR, then locality constraints have simply gone away. Rather than video's challenge of being an impoverished medium, which may or may not be worth some non-locality benefit. > MIT Stanford Wormhole I spent a lot of time in Stata, over may years, and I'm not sure I ever saw the "wormhole" used. But perhaps there was some pattern of use, like late lunch, which I systematically missed. And one can walk by the cafeteria without easily noticing.

memebox3v 9y ago

Or for that matter self driving cars. You could commute for 5 hours a day, spend 2 hours in the office and go home again. All while being productive. That greatly increases the commutable range. Then you have the prospect of self driving Motor homes, moving with the work becomes that much easier.

kaybe 9y ago
How will we be able to do this without fossil fuels?
mncharity 9y ago
People take commuter buses with wifi, from Pennsylvania to NYC, with a 2 to 4 hour round trip. A few commute Boston to NYC on Amtrak Acela, with a 7-ish hour round trip (you can stand up and walk around, get coffee, etc).

dwighttk 9y ago

I don't understand what problem VR/AR is solving in your hypothetical.

falcor84 9y ago
Not the OP, but I've been thinking about this a lot recently. The problem is that telecommuting is currently very limited by technology. You can currently only transport your voice and a single video view, while collaborating over a single view from a monitor. You end up missing on very many of the modalities available in the real world. But my vision of what work and study could be like with good VR is The Magic School Bus. Assume that every time you an your colleagues wanted to do work on any domain, you would be transported into a hi-fi all-senses-included representation of that domain, which provides a perfect sense of presence. That technology is still quite far away, but once we're there, it would be significantly better than just being in a room with them. And the world would be forever changed.
- dwighttk 9y ago
  so: constricted communication bandwidth?
  - SmooL 9y ago
    That's one way to describe it, a better way might be that's its not bandwidth that limits remote working communication, but just a lack of features. To loop this back to the topic at hand, the idea is that you need people in the same space to work effectively. That idea forces collections of people (cities) and drives up the value of the land (a fixed commodity). Having technology that removes the need to have the workforce physically opens up vast amounts of relatively cheap land to live on.
    - dwighttk 9y ago
      I think the efficiency gain from cities is more than just some people working in a single company, but all sorts of logistical savings. Perhaps my imagination isn't big enough, but I just don't see VR replacing dasein as it were.
      - mncharity 9y ago

jpao79 9y ago

Or maybe even just an always-on video setup. Basically use the following innovations to connect an office in SF with one in Fresno: 1.) MIT Stanford Wormhole http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/08/22/wormhole_links_mit_and_stanford/ http://archive.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2011/... The designers of the installation, who call it the wormhole, say it is meant to encourage random encounters between students and staff at two of the country’s premier technology-oriented universities. Someone at MIT’s Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences, hungry for lunch and conversation, will be able to chat under the dome with a stranger who’s grabbing a morning coffee in Stanford’s Huang Engineering Center. Casual meetings can be held at the wormhole. New ideas may be spurred, new science inspired. 2.) Google Fiber 3.) 200 inch LED video wall https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/07/samsung-4k-146-inch-microled-wall-ces-2018/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/07/samsung-4k-146-inch-micr...

mncharity 9y ago
> Or maybe even just an always-on video Or perhaps video in addition to XR? HMDs don't entirely play well with eyes (at least until we get adaptive optics or light fields), so I want to give my eyes a break periodically. A video wall in the kitchen would permit a "let's take a break" conversation with a non-local colleague. The power of the XR argument, is that if your ideal development environment is XR, and your ideal collaboration context is via XR, then locality constraints have simply gone away. Rather than video's challenge of being an impoverished medium, which may or may not be worth some non-locality benefit. > MIT Stanford Wormhole I spent a lot of time in Stata, over may years, and I'm not sure I ever saw the "wormhole" used. But perhaps there was some pattern of use, like late lunch, which I systematically missed. And one can walk by the cafeteria without easily noticing.