This is such an interesting turn of things. Science fiction has been talking about this since the 60s. It's a shame it took so long for a remote work revolution

This is such an interesting turn of things. Science fiction has been talking about this since the 60s. It's a shame it took so long for a remote work revolution to happen. I am currently at my office but everyone else in the office is telecoferencing, so i have to wear headphones. This is a new normal. Office is not office anymore. Cities have been left behind all these decades, they were hyperoptimizing for people commuting daily to factories which dont exist anymore, separated in residential and commercial districts for no real reason, managing peak hour traffic as if peak hour is an inevitability (and this hyperoptimization is much more prevalent in the US). We ve learned that "work" is a place while truly it's an amount of energy that can be put any hour. The cherished "work/life separation" is just a shift in attention, or rather, it can be all life now, a life that includes work. It's not like work-life separation existed before , in the sense that people don't stop thinking about work when at home or vice-versa. 9-5 schedules are only applicable to a small percentage of remotable-work. We have now the opportunity to redefine living itself. It feels like we are finally entering the 21st century. An interesting question is what opportunities arise in this post-office world. One could see co-working offices becoming as common as corner stores for people who need them, not via global conglomerates like wework, but mom-and-pop converting their old abandoned properties to a work-from-office workplace/cafeteria. We will need new places, places to meet people that don't exist yet, services for people who will prefer nomad-style medium-term living, remote work visas, co-living spaces with all amenities, home-office retrofitting services etc. Work defines cities, and this change is not going to be different. We also need to stop treating remote work as marginal , and remote workers as some sort of pariahs that are never accounted for in public city planning. Business happens at home as much as in the busy streets now. What will come in the future boils down to psychology: Yes, being at home the entire time is miserable, we know that from animal studies. Our hippocampus gets excited by changing our environment. Going out for exercise is nice, but it's too short to matter, we need to find ways to maintain balance between movement and routine. Nomad living, or perhaps changing cities every few years (the way many academics do) may become a lot more common and commercialized. Schooling services for nomads may become a thing. It's tempting to think that we 'll go back to village-living, but if you've lived it you 'd know it's suffocating. Our new normal has to be better, not worse.