Home

Commutar

"Never physically commute again".

About us:

We are analyzing and designing and aggregating and developing tele-working ideas, tools and solutions.

Benefits:

Society:

• cut fuel/CO2/climatechange, transportation costs, road salt and lake salination, public infrastructure, traffic jams; increase GDP/capita by applying human time/effort to value-adding; use human talent more efficiently

• reduce political polarization and radicalization of far right in non-major-urban areas by distributing big city productivity more evenly across a nation

Employee: cut wasted time/life commuting, accidents/injuries/road-death; own home in low cost outlying city and still get to dream job anywhere

Employer: recruit top talent from wider geographical region without paying commute or city-centre-real-estate premium; keep mat-leave employees engaged/transition; capture employee actions for AI training/automation

Issues:

- transmitting motivational and alignment aspects of corporate culture / context / people

- security

- collaboration / coordination hints

Context:

http://reprogrammingmobility.org

- urban mobility in the era of autonomous vehicles

https://www.rethinkx.com/transportation

- shift to TaaS Transport as a Service lowers cost, CO2

- but still hour/day commuting

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171004142706.htm

- VR and telerobotics

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/telecommuting-on-rise-1.4887564

- telecommuting on the rise for real-estate and labor shortage reasons

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-s-digital-workers-1.4889691

- online gig economy doing great

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/telecommuting-productivity-1.4899719

- economics professor's study shows creative work best done at home, dull at office

- suggestion: add 'effort monitor / feedback loop' to show co-workers home person is working hard

Hypotheses for why we still see physical commuting:

A. worker induced/forced/desired commuting

H0: worker needs to feel like they worked / earned their pay, so they appreciate it and save / invest wisely

- (otherwise like lottery winnings - blown/easy-come-esay-go)

- longer commute / longer working day tires them out, makes them feel more like they earned it

- possibly related to Marchetti's constant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant

- possibly related to a feeling of 'moral rightiousness'/feeling of relative superiority as motivator, as seen in some religions

H1: humans are pack / herd / tribe / team animals - they want to feel like they belong to a pack

- and physical proximity helps

- provides feeling of security, belonging, purpose

- provides instinctual (pack/tribe/herd) motivation to support what they know logically they should be doing

H2: its about getting away from family / home / house

- a change of context changes state-of-mind, focus, priorities/goals, role and role-behaviour

- ie physical surroundings as cue to mind state / role

-- H: a holodeck room could do the same

- could 'mini-commute' to a nearby telecommuting site for same role-change effect

- could be much different energy states and goal drive: driven at work, relaxed at home

H3: embarrassment / shame about other role

- ashamed of how earn a living

-- want to hide it from familiy, or want to boast/re-interpret/spin to family

- ashamed of familiy/home, want to hide family/home from co-workers/employer

- hiding something from family about work, or hiding something from co-workers about family/home

-- ie complaining as a coping mechanism, need to complain elsewhere in order to survive somewhere

- not ashamed, but normal privacy like washroom privacy

B company/boss induced/forced/desired commuting

H0: security, against

- damaging use of secret information on strategy, technology, personnel, dirt

- publicity embarrassment

via

- 3rd party incidental shoulder surfing, outbound audio

- 3rd party malice - eavesdropping, keyboard intercept for passwords, camera surfing

- worker malice -

a) selling for $

b) defense in case fired > dirt collection, ransomable info

c) future competitor > copying information to non-work computing resources

H1: worker motivation

a) focus

b) monitoring of individual effort/contribution

- especially when deliverables are team effort/shared, or hard to measure

- supplementing or alternative to efficient wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency_wage

c) convenience / likelihood / ease of coordination / cooperation / info sharing

d) team/pack/tribe shared purpose/goal motivational alignment

H1b: even when not directly talking, often we form decisions and act in a way that we can explain in the context/to the people around us

H2: ease of middle-bossing, bosses feel like they are working/earning their pay just by being in their office eating donuts, if 10 feet away there's a cubical full of workers that report to them

H3: [fear of] cost of digital tracking:

- harder to hire and keep employees if they know everything they do is recorded / recordable / monitored

-- employee exhaustion from continuous 8 hrs real effort, employees burn out, run out of creative ideas

-- vs competitors measure only facetime, and easy to fake busywork when boss looking, for same pay

H4: diversity dividend

- https://www.cigionline.org/person/bessma-momani

-- 'diversity dividend' measured, +ve

- H4a: the more people in a room -even if all vocally silent- the more each one considers more points of view when analyzing and designing

- Corollary 4a: if you're home alone, no diversity dividend

C. task-specific

- dexterous ie food preparation

- whole body ie construction

- customer facing ie walk-in customers at retail

Methods:

0. already plenty of standard IT (information technology) methods for remote working:

- email

- mechanical turks https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

- VPN, VNC, RDP, PPTA, VOIP

- various aftermarket software for remotely collaborating

-- https://www.teamviewer.com/en/

-- https://www.skype.com/en/

-- etc

Apparently all that's not enough, we still see commuters on the roads and in transit every weekday morning and evening

Here's a few more teleworking methods:

1. TelePresence:using MGOIP (MicroGesture over IP) reduces upload bandwidth allowing continuous operation through working day, shows higher resolution gestures than compressed video, and allows heads to turn in meeting of 3+, so its clear who is talking to who.