Smarts Ad Media Blog

Cullen and Steve, Back in the days when we were all still typing on blue screens, I recall experts saying that working at home improvement tips would become the norm. I have a few friends who started viable home businesses with little more than a home computer and a fax machine, but for the most part, white collar Americans are still getting into cars and sitting in rush hour traffic for hours to get to an office and do the same work which could be done at home. (And in fact, they do bring a lot of work home, which you didn’t do in the ’60′s. Back then, men stayed late at the office.) Nowadays, with gas prices going through the roof, does that running back and forth really make economic sense? Is sitting in traffic jams really a wise allocation of time and resources? For that matter, do business trips make that much sense when you can teleconference? It’s not that difficult to foresee a situation where a Chicagoan will log-in to work from her home computer and touch base with her boss – who might be in Seattle or Toronto (or, more likely, in Bejing or Madras.)

We can’t yet imagine how such arrangements would work on a mass scale, since we are still so wedded to the 20th century model of parents commuting from the suburbs to brick and mortar buildings while the kids are in day care or school. It’s one way moms might return to their homes while continuing to draw a paycheck.