[ExI] Serious topic

[Samantha Atkins]

On 03/01/2011 03:49 AM, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Eugen Leitl wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 09:10:27PM -0500, Mike Dougherty wrote:
>>
>>> Can we persuade governments to incentivise knowledge workers to stay
>>> home and telecommute?  Once I can do my job without the daily to/from
>>
>> Here's an infrastructure problem, again. In order to make
>> telepresence happen you need to roll out symmetric high-bandwidth
>> connections, which basically means laying ducts and pulling
>> fiber (owned by municipalities, operated by contracting companies), 
>> plus provide enough backbone capacity.
>
> While this is a fairly costly investment, it is not that extreme as 
> infrastructure goes.
>
> I think a bigger problem is that we need the right kind of software 
> framing to make it work socially. Telecommuting in isolation is likely 
> not just understimulating, it misses a lot of the important social 
> cues and activities that go on at a job (both the good and the bad). 

It takes some retraining.  People tend to not open IM even with video to 
have the chat they would walk across campus normally to have.  Not sure 
why.   Perhaps we can do something like this about it.

http://telecommutingjournal.com/anybots-the-telecommuters-avatar/854
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/science/05robots.html?_r=1

Also, we could have a LOT better microphones and webcams in conference 
rooms.  The sound quality of these today really sucks and it is not 
necessary.

Lastly, for many job the need for direct exchange face to face or 
meetings is very low.  Take software engineering for example and 
especially the success of open source teams spread all over the world.

- samantha