5 ms·

These are some really prescient predictions... - The home will double as a place of employment, with men and women conducting much of their work at the compute

These are some really prescient predictions... - The home will double as a place of employment, with men and women conducting much of their work at the computer terminal. This will affect both the architecture and location of the home. It will also blur the distinction between places of residence and places of business, with uncertain effects on zoning, travel patterns and neighborhoods. (This basically describes my life ;) - Home-based shopping will permit consumers to control manufacturing directly, ordering exactly what they need for "production on demand." (Kickstarter is a nice example.) - There will be a shift away from conventional workplace and school socialization. Friends, peer groups and alliances will be determined electronically, creating classes of people based on interests and skills rather than age and social class. (You're participating in one such peer group right now...) - A new profession of information "brokers" and "managers" will emerge, serving as "gatekeepers," monitoring politicians and corporations and selectively releasing information to interested parties. (Bloggers, obviously, but more interestingly, Wikileaks, Lulzsec, Anonymous...)

brudgers 15y ago
The overlapping of home and workplace appears to have been the primary pattern of human habitation since before the bronze age. It is the recent pattern of home and workplace segregation which has been facilitated by 20th century transportation technology which is the radical exception.
- Zumzoa 15y ago
  I would argue that it was industrialisation, not transport, that led to home/workplace segregation. Large mills, running on water or steam power, could not exist on a small scale or too near to residences.
  - danohuiginn 15y ago
    Just as much, because large mills give the ability to monitor your workers. Getting people to clock on 8 hours per day (or, before the socialists changed it, 14+ hours per day) gives you much more ability to extract labour from them.
dangrossman 15y ago
The "uncertain effects on zoning" seem to be just a way to money-grab around here. I had to pay my township for a zoning permit to have a home office... that is, a fee just to have a computer used for business inside a residence.
- bjelkeman-again 15y ago
  Did you need this permit for something specific, like your insurance or for having your home address as your business address?
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    The township knows I work from home because the address for my business license is my home. A zoning permit is required for any home occupation, even if it involves no business use of the home beyond having a computer there. That's on top of the annual business privilege fee and gross receipts tax. Being self-employed means a lot of hands in your pocket around here...
michael_dorfman 15y ago
I disagree with you on all of these, actually. -The home does double as a place of employment, but this has had no discernible effect on the architecture and location of the home, or led to significant changes in zoning or travel patterns. -Home-based shopping has indeed taken off, but manufacturing has not switched to a production-on-demand model (and Kickstarter has nothing to do with this whatsoever-- that's about seed funding.) -Friends, peer groups and alliances are indeed determined electronically, but this has not (yet) led to "classes of people" akin to social class. -Information brokers do serve as gatekeepers, but this has not become professionalized; bloggers (and groups like Wikileaks, Lulzsec, etc.) are amateurs, and have not developed professional standards or codes of ethics, etc. In other words, Yogi Berra was right: prediction is hard, especially about the future.
- wladimir 15y ago
  To all of those you could reply "not yet, but we've come a long way". I think we're still in the early stages of the "virtualisation" of the world, and those predictions will work out eventually.
- nhaehnle 15y ago
  As far as manufacturing is concerned, print-on-demand is a good example of one sector that has gone into the production-on-demand direction. Springer has almost entirely to print-on-demand, for example. But yeah, I'm with you that the extent of future changes is almost always either over- or underestimated.
  - earino 15y ago
    I work for Lightning Source, a POD provider, and I can tell you that the "production-on-demand" model is working out pretty fine and dandy :-)
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    That's a bit of an overstatement where Springer is concerned. Right now, they have 15,000 titles from the past 5 years available as print-on-demand, which is impressive enough, but they publish 6,500 titles per year, and have been for decades-- so they are still a long way from having even half of their titles available in that form. Not exactly "almost entirely".

brudgers 15y ago

The overlapping of home and workplace appears to have been the primary pattern of human habitation since before the bronze age. It is the recent pattern of home and workplace segregation which has been facilitated by 20th century transportation technology which is the radical exception.

Zumzoa 15y ago
I would argue that it was industrialisation, not transport, that led to home/workplace segregation. Large mills, running on water or steam power, could not exist on a small scale or too near to residences.
- danohuiginn 15y ago
  Just as much, because large mills give the ability to monitor your workers. Getting people to clock on 8 hours per day (or, before the socialists changed it, 14+ hours per day) gives you much more ability to extract labour from them.

dangrossman 15y ago

The "uncertain effects on zoning" seem to be just a way to money-grab around here. I had to pay my township for a zoning permit to have a home office... that is, a fee just to have a computer used for business inside a residence.

bjelkeman-again 15y ago
Did you need this permit for something specific, like your insurance or for having your home address as your business address?
- dangrossman 15y ago
  The township knows I work from home because the address for my business license is my home. A zoning permit is required for any home occupation, even if it involves no business use of the home beyond having a computer there. That's on top of the annual business privilege fee and gross receipts tax. Being self-employed means a lot of hands in your pocket around here...

michael_dorfman 15y ago

I disagree with you on all of these, actually. -The home does double as a place of employment, but this has had no discernible effect on the architecture and location of the home, or led to significant changes in zoning or travel patterns. -Home-based shopping has indeed taken off, but manufacturing has not switched to a production-on-demand model (and Kickstarter has nothing to do with this whatsoever-- that's about seed funding.) -Friends, peer groups and alliances are indeed determined electronically, but this has not (yet) led to "classes of people" akin to social class. -Information brokers do serve as gatekeepers, but this has not become professionalized; bloggers (and groups like Wikileaks, Lulzsec, etc.) are amateurs, and have not developed professional standards or codes of ethics, etc. In other words, Yogi Berra was right: prediction is hard, especially about the future.

wladimir 15y ago
To all of those you could reply "not yet, but we've come a long way". I think we're still in the early stages of the "virtualisation" of the world, and those predictions will work out eventually.
nhaehnle 15y ago
As far as manufacturing is concerned, print-on-demand is a good example of one sector that has gone into the production-on-demand direction. Springer has almost entirely to print-on-demand, for example. But yeah, I'm with you that the extent of future changes is almost always either over- or underestimated.
- earino 15y ago
  I work for Lightning Source, a POD provider, and I can tell you that the "production-on-demand" model is working out pretty fine and dandy :-)
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  That's a bit of an overstatement where Springer is concerned. Right now, they have 15,000 titles from the past 5 years available as print-on-demand, which is impressive enough, but they publish 6,500 titles per year, and have been for decades-- so they are still a long way from having even half of their titles available in that form. Not exactly "almost entirely".