The Electronic Cottage — Haven or Nightmare?
| Pages | 22-25 |
| Date | 01 January 1985 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb057391 |
| Published date | 01 January 1985 |
| Author | Linda Thompson |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
The Electronic
Cottage
—
Haven
or
Nightmare?
by Linda Thompson
The Future and the Past
Futurologists have made
a
number
of
diverse and often
con-
tradictory predictions about
the
ways
in
which
our
lives
and
work will change before
we
reach
the
twenty-first century;
but
one
idea
on
which there seems
to be a
marked degree
of consensus
is
that
we are not far
from
the day
when many
of
us
will work from home
on our own
computer terminals
Indeed,
the
writer
of
this article
is
doing just that,
and
there
are already
a few
organisations such
as
ICL, F International
and Rank Xerox with several years experience
of
contrac-
ting
out
work involving computers either
to
employees,
as
in
the
first
two
cases,
or to the
self-employed,
as in the
third
Working from home,
then,
is
already happening,
and a
number
of
organisations
are
actively considering whether
their employees could work
at
least
in
part from their homes
But
is
this
a
development
to be
welcomed
and
encourag-
ed,
or
will
it
undermine both employment
as we
know
it and
the basis
of our
private lives?
Before
the
industrial revolution,
the
futurologists point
out,
our homes were also
our
workplaces,
so the
proposition
is
hardly
new or
revolutionary, they
say In
years
to
come
we
may look back
on the
factories
and
offices
— and the
rush-
hours
— of the
twentieth century
as a
temporary aberra-
tion
Now,
with microcomputers connected through
the
telephone network,
the
technology
is
already largely created
for
us to
enter
the era of
"telecommuting". Instead
of
peo-
ple travelling
in
tube trains, information will travel along coax-
ial
and
fibre optic cables
But is it
really valid
to
draw
a
parallel between working
at
home
in the
distant past,
and
working
at
home
in the
future?
Alvin Toffler, author
of
Future Shock
and The
Third Wave
has coined
the
phrase
"the
electronic cottage"
to
describe
the phenomenon
of
home-based high technology work
—
and
a
highly evocative
and
memorable phrase
it is. The
choice
of the
word "cottage" conjures
up
visions,
on the
one hand,
of
thatched roof, roses round
the
door,
and a
lifestyle that combines skilled craftsmanship with rustic
simplicity.
A
William Morris style hand-blocked computer
print-out, perhaps
But on the
other hand, add
the
word
"in-
dustry",
and
negative connotations
may
begin
to
creep
in
"cottage industry" suggests
not
only roses and thatch,
but
also long hours
of
toil
by the dim
light
of
rush candles
for
inadequate, subsistence wages:
the
sweated labour
of the
seamstress,
for
instance, ruining
her
eyesight over
her
fine
sewing.
And despite electric light and electric sewing machines,
re-
cent research described below demonstrates that
the ex-
ploitation
of
home workers still goes
on in
certain industries
Is
it
realistic,
then,
to
hope that
the new
technology
of the
"electronic cottage" will offer
us a
high standard
of
living,
combined with shorter working hours,
and
freedom from
the twice-daily, lemming-like rush
to
and from
the
city
cen-
tres?
Or
will
the
backache
and
eyestrain
of
long hours
of
working
by
candle-light
be
replaced
by the
backache
and
eyestrain
of
long hours
of
keying-in
at
the visual display unit?
There
are a
number
of
factors which must
be
taken into
account, from macroeconomic
to
microsocial,
in
attemp-
ting
to
evaluate
the
costs
and
benefits
of
home working
to
employers, employees
and
their families.
We
may
question first
how
literally
we
should interpret
the
concept
of
pre-industrial revolution work
"at
home".
One
can't grow much food
in a
window
box in the
living room,
and
in
consequence
we may
doubt whether
the
agricultural
worker
in
those bygone days actually spent much time
at
his cottage fireside.
In all
probability, most
of the
daylight
hours were spent
in
fields
or
outbuildings
—
either
his
own,
or more likely, those
of a
feudal master. Women
and
children,
too,
worked
out of
doors
at
times such
as
plan-
ting
and
harvesting because these were highly labour-
intensive activities
in the
days before
the
combine harvester.
This leads
us to
consider
the
issue
of the
social organisa-
tion
of
work
in
earlier times
and in
pre-industrial societies
today. There
is a
case
to be
made that essentially home
or
locally based work served
to
integrate
the
members
of the
family
and to
promote social cohesion.
For
instance,
childhood
as we
currently understand
it, in
terms
of a
pro-
tracted period
of
play
and
learning with little real respon-
sibility,
is a
relatively recent invention
of
advanced industrial
societies.
In
simpler cultures, children
are
expected
to
take
a share
of the
essential chores such
as
fetching wood
and
water,
and
tending animals,
by the
time they
are
five
or six
years old This
may be a
necessity
for
survival beyond which
we
are
thankful
to
have progressed,
but
going
to the op-
posite extreme
by
prolonging economic dependency
and
delaying
the
attainment
of
adult status
far
beyond physical
and sexual maturity does
not
appear
to be
a recipe
for
con-
22 IMDS
•
JANUARY/FEBRUARY
• 1985
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