Vint Cerf: High Oil Prices Could Help the Web
While some of our European readers may snicker if I were to complain about having to pay $4.10/gallon to fill up my car's gas tank, the fact is that across the world many people are feeling pressure at the pump. There are some who argue that the environmental benefits of high gas prices, which are changing our energy consumption habits for the better, outweigh the economic problems pricey fuel creates. But one unexpected benefit of rising fuel costs might be felt on the web, where high gas prices may help to drive adoption of web apps, says Google vice president Vinton Cerf, according to the AFP.
"It (high oil prices) may have a positive impact on the Internet," Cerf told a group yesterday in Seoul, South Korea. "We may turn increasingly to video conferencing or other kinds of electronic media in order to avoid having to travel."
Indeed, the demand for telecommuting is on the rise as a result of rising energy costs. While not all jobs can be done from home, one study found that if every worker in the United States who could telecommute -- 53% of white collar workers -- did so twice per week, 9.7 billion gallons of gas and $38.2 billion would be saved annually. Another recent study found that 37% of IT workers in the US would be willing to take a 10% pay cut if telecommuting were offered as an option -- 22% would take a pay cut to work form home in the UK. A bill requiring federal workers in the US who are eligible to work from home be allowed to at least 20% of the time recently passed in the House of Representatives and a similar bill is making its way through the Senate.
So how does that help the web? More home workers, means a larger market for applications designed to help remote workers collaborate. Things like Google Docs, Basecamp, Dimdim, and PalBee will all benefit from a larger contingent of home workers.
Do you work from home? Would you be willing to take a pay cut if you were given that option? Do you agree with Cerf, will the high cost of oil will force more people to work via the web rather than face to face? Let us know in the comments below.
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Might also be the spark enterprise virtual worlds and spaces like Qwaq need. And that could benefit the metaverse as a whole.
With the recent fuels crisis causing petrol to spike to $14.85 per US gallon here in Britain, snickering definitely wasn't the first reaction that came to mind...
http://www.dailyack.com/2008/06/petrol-crisis-what-petrol-crisis.html
I regularly work from home. For me, it means I see the family despite working long hours, and I don't sacrifice time travelling that I could spend catching up on lost sleep. It also means I'm a lot more productive and I pick up more of the overheads associated with work (electricity, etc). I'm not sure why anyone would suggest that home workers should/could be paid less. It'd be like paying someone less because they bring their own tools to work.
I work from home most of the time, and I travel occasionally for onsite customer visits, but most of the time I'm at home and use my employer's or my customers' VPN access to reach internal systems to do my job. My primary person-to-person interface tools are conference calls, instant messaging, and email.
The flexible time at home lets me perform tasks during different times of the day and night, which in turn allows me to run errands or attend my kids' functions at school during the week which would otherwise be difficult to do. My weekends are less crammed with errand-running, and I feel like there's a real work-life balance overall.
People tell me that they may not be disciplined enough to work from home. It's true there are many potential distractions. But what I tell myself is that if I'm not productive, then the privilege of working from home will go away and I'll be forced to spend a lot of money on gas in order to drive to the office just so I can be distracted by fellow co-workers ;-)
With the cost savings of working from home, I would definitely take a pay decrease!
A 20% reduction in overall domestic auto commuting (mostly spent sitting in traffic idling), would cause the supply chain of distilled petrol to back up. This would cause an unwinding of the the criminal trade of 'dry futures contracts', traded in the NYMEX pit by speculators that have no ability to take delivery of the product they are bidding on. As long as the CFTC is unwilling to enforce margin requirements, thereby allowing free, no minimum (or insignificant) margin trading of paper contracts, we are in big trouble.
If we start telecommuting in earnest, we could really hit the NYMEX pits where it hurts - contract expiration. They would have the fear of G-d, and never do it again - until next time.
Oh yes, and for people that worry about working from home and not having the focus to focus, here is some advice:
Get dressed and wear your shoes. There is something about padding around in sweats and bare or stockinged feet that is antithetical to work.
Put your shoes on, telecommuting America, dammit.
Actually, I though about buying a bicycle.
Telecommuting doesn't work for me (I can't force myself to put on shoes if no one is around) but gas represents such a big part of my budget now, it's ridiculous.
Here in Uruguay we pay 1.5 US$ per liter (6US$ per gallon), and the average IT salary is US$ 1200 per month.
Cerf is totally right though. Not everybody has the luck to be able to ride a bike to work.
I dislike the "pay cut" talk. Businesses already undervalue the services provided by those working from home offices (even though equivalent or superior work is often produced)--we don't need any additional misconceptions and prejudices floating about.
Working from home is not some wonderful "privilege" handed out from the management gods (a.k.a., insecure control freaks).
End of rant. :)
I love working from home. I get to be part of my family again and don't have to suffer the 4 hour round trip commute I used to do to Boston each day (mostly sitting in traffic)
It also makes me feel good to think of the ecological benefits of not driving a vehicle. And I practice what I preach - we use Dimdim every day to communicate with our offices in India, Canada and the US. I really can't imagine how we lived before Dimdim - I don't ever want to commute again!
And when was the last time a free product, like Dimdim SAVED you money? Thanks!
When we expanded our virtual team I decided to close the downtown office and work from home. When I started adding up the impact that change had on cost of maintenance and consumables it was shocking. Beyond the gas, parking, capital and maintenance for the car etc there are a lot of small things related to your moving around that you might never think of - shoes, to-go coffee cups, roads, etc. Extrapolate that into millions of people moving around, all year long, just to find a chair; the "cost" is staggering. My guess is that our "impact" on the environment has been cut in half (at least) by working at home.
With that experience supporting a policy of broad and dramatic reduction in energy use doesn't seem that radical. In fact it's actually been refreshing as I feel my quality of life has also improved substantially.
Not only can high oil price help the web I think the web can help high oil through enabling collaboration on radical alternatives to the energy and transportation systems we've becoming accustomed to that are making us poor in so many ways.
I would love to work at home at least part of the time if my job could be structured in a way that didn't require my physical presence. But, I'm not sure I'd want to do it all the time. I simply enjoy interacting with my co-workers.
As for the pay cut, I have mixed emotions. In principle, I'd need to be shown why telecommuting diminishes the net value of my work. In practice, the cost savings would need to at least balance the pay cut.
I'm in the UK, where I'm JUST old enough to remember when we paid as little as $4.10 per gallon :-)
I've been teleworking for ten years now - in a typical week I work from home 3 days a week.
I'd be dubious of talk of "pay cuts" though - while the Internet provides some great free tools, and PCs are (compared to ten years ago) incredibly cheap, the fact of the matter is that working from home effectively for more than a brief project requires setting up a dedicated space as an office.
With both my wife and I having "home offices", that's effectively meant dedicating two bedrooms - so finding a 5-bed house rather than a 3-bed one. There is a cost to that!
TBH, it was easier when I was in my 20s, and no children - then I _could_ manage with just a PC in the corner of the room - but now I'm in my late 30s I need somewhere that the children know is "daddy's office", and when he's in there he's not available to play.
Working from home is quite nice. But I do not like have my office at home, all the time. Could not see this walls all the time.
Nice article and commentline.