John...mabye you've benn out of the work field for some time; there's more ways than ever to get a hold of a telecommuter, and few use their home phone. First of all there's email and voicemail; secondly, calls are routed thru servers where they go to a database; customers can easily get service and calls returned; the customer never knows where you're working from; the flow is seemless. The hold up for the customer is the same as it's always been, regardless of location: more work than staff. Ask to see a telecommuter setup sometime and you'll find it works extremely well, and the employer saves on the Real Estate space. If you know your employees, this works well.

Not so fast!

Humm, it seem to me that many on TOD complain about the loss of manufacturing in the USA. Manufacturing jobs can not be telecommuted. Nor can retail sales, medical treatment, energy production/distribution, government services, etc....

I guess if someone needs to be physically transported into a hospital for surgery, or raw materials need to be delivered to a manufacturing plant than telecommuting won't work for that. Or installing infrastructure for a power distribution grid for that matter.

We do operate rovers on Mars don't we?

So I guess at least some manufacturing can be done remotely, CADCAM anyone? As for retail sales,we already have online e-commerce sites with live chat and warm customer service reps. Medical treatment? I can conceive of some aspects of it being quite similar to e-commerce, maybe with the right monitors and instruments built into future telecommunications devices some of that might be done by telepresence as well. As for energy production/distribution, government services, etc.... I think the same will apply.

I strongly suspect that we could do a lot more things with networked technology and communications than we do now. Anyone ever hear of Smartdust? I could imagine logging onto a hydroponics network and being able to tend to my plants by reading strategically placed micro sensors and deploying very precise doses of pesticides or nutrients.

As a real life example during the course of my normal workday today I did work on computer systems in the UK, Australia, South Africa, Shanghai and then I had to get into my car and drive 80 miles round trip in heavy rain to visit a local customer. Fortunately I find myself having to do less less of that. The travel time in my opinion was time very poorly spent. I could have been Kayaking for two hours instead.

Jon;
I understand some of your concerns, however I think this solution does have a good number of useful applications, including a number of hands-on jobs. I represent two or three myself. I am a freelancer, ostensibly a filmmaker/videographer, but also a builder of exhibits and displays. In both cases, I'll get a call or an email, and whether it's a production or a display item, I'll have a design period that may include face-to-face meetings, but will also invariably involve emailing (nee, faxing) designs, scripts and schedules which will be developed at home, as well as building and filming items from these plans in my shop, or editing material and sharing video files online for review, in many cases. The amount of travel is diminished massively by the breadth of communications technology. While my examples are quite specific, there are a number of directions they can and do reach into.

Like you, however, I would be interested to see a real review of what aspects of the "Non-discretionary side of the Workforce" would apply. I think tele-education is a particularly useful extension of this idea, as well as the opportunities for Senior Citizens and People with Disabilities to work. I'm also looking at the angle of 'hybrid-career paths', where a farmer might 'telecommute' as a teacher when not out in the fields, or something like that.. part-time telecommuting.. or Single-moms being able to work when there's no access to (telecommuting?) childcare providers.

In addition, my greatest interest in making this seem truly stable in its potential would be to have a couple parallel paths of information available, so that there would be quick alternatives ready for system traffic-jams and outages.. Dialup and Satellite.. Packet Radio etc..

Bob

During WWII both Germany and Japan used home based manufacturing of airplane parts. The air forces of these countries were not defeated because they ran out of airplanes. It was the loss of experienced pilots which did them in. The fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were justified because of home based manufacturing.
On another note I would expect that electric utilities would be the first industry to implement electric vehicles in a big way. Who else could tap into high voltage lines close to where the work needs to be done?