What came first: the skyscraper or the telephone ?
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. ― George Bernard Shaw
The phone came first. Without it, who would want to live or work at the top of a high-rise building. How would you communicate with other people? You would be catching the elevator all day. Yup, the telephone liberated the world. It allowed people to live and work vertically.
The word “hello” is a modern word. It came about after the telephone got invented. This new curious machine would make a noise, er, ring, and you picked up the receiver and went “hello”. Yup, the telephone changed our lives. I think for the better.
The Internet changed our lives even further. With high-speed access, a lot of jobs can be done remotely, from home, far from the city center. People don’t need to go to the office often. And some never need to go to the office at all, apparently.
And then along came the pandemic, and all of this is being tested to the max. Some tech companies, for example, are saying that their staff can work from home for the next year, and some are saying as for as long as people want, like, yeah, forever.
There are of course pros and cons to working from home, but in my view, if the shift to WFH keeps growing, then we are definitely going to lose something. As it is, too many folk, especially the youth, are glued to their mobile phones all day, so now, we are potentially going to replace the one source of human interaction we still have: the office. Soft skills will suffer, and team building will be become nostalgia. A company celebration after a job well done, a magical new product launch, a terrific financial year-end event, a corporate Christmas party … these are not the same over Zoom.
I have been privileged to have spent time working in creative bustling cities around the world. The energy and buzz you experience in those metropolises cannot be replaced by video conferencing. The people give it a pace, and the creative sparks that fly off in every direction won’t be found in cyberspace. Those encounters with energized people, those moments of inspiration, collaborations … these are what an office environment brings. And of course, perspective — something we don’t get when we are on our own.
I have been reading online about cities like London and New York, where offices are emptying out with the WFH drive. I believe these cities will always have an attraction, but things are certainly changing. And it may take years before a week in the Big Apple, for example, has the same appeal as it had before.
The immediate economic damage to large cities across the UK, and particularly inner London, is clear. The City of Westminster will suffer a 63 per cent drop in gross value added in 2020, knocking about £48bn from its economic activity this year, according to analysis by the Westminster Property Association, a trade body. — FT
It is interesting to ponder that one of the biggest industries to be embracing the WFH movement is the tech space. This is the same sector that is fueling the stock market, which is causing a lot of concern about the Wall Street bubble bursting. The tech from these IT firms is also what is enabling us to work remotely, from home, a mountain top, or some remote island. Love or hate big tech, they are very much a part of our lives and they are influencing a lot of our behavior. If the WFH movement reaches a maximum, does that mean that whoever can work remotely, will do so? What happens then? Do the world’s leading cities ever fill up again?
Observations from Gus Silber: Technology tends to get a bad rap these days, the most current example being the Netflix documentary-drama, The Social Dilemma, which warns us about the supposed evils and dangers of social media in this age of perpetual surveillance. I found the documentary so gloomy and one-sided in its thesis, that I stopped watching after about 20 minutes and chose to check Facebook and my Twitter-feed instead. I am constantly amazed by the benefits and utility of digital technology, whether it’s the Apple watch on my arm, silently monitoring my heart-rate, the phone on my dashboard guiding me to my destination by GPS, the music streaming into my room from Spotify, or the instant answers to the most obscure questions on Google. We live in an age when magic has become commonplace and everyday, and it is this same magic that has allowed us to connect with each other even when the pandemic forced us to lock down and stay indoors. The Internet is a miracle of human invention, but it is still just a proxy for the instinct that really makes us human: the instinct to be part of something that is greater than ourselves, a cause, a community, a belief. And to be part of it in person, face to face, one to one, beyond the dilemma of social distance.
We would be keen to hear your thoughts. If you want to share your perspective please send an email to ronnie@prettyapt.com
