The current daily ritual of travelling a significant distance to a "workplace" at the start of the day and then back home when organizational labours are completed is a relatively new historical phenomenon that is unlikely to remain the dominant norm. Indeed due to Peak Oil and other resource depletion, regulatory measures being taken to try and combat climate change, and a potential global flu or other viral pandemic, over the coming decades more and more people are likely to spend at least part of their working week from home. This is also increasingly becoming possible due to a range of Internet developments including cloud computing, as well as the growth of a knowledge economy in which brain power is the greater human resource than muscle power. It is perhaps therefore hardly surprising that recent research by Affiniti for the Telework Association suggests that in the United Kingdom up to two thirds of the workforce wants to be working from home at least part of the time by 2010.

For organizations, the benefits to be reaped when employees work from home can include reduced real estate and utility costs (as less office space is required), together with improve productivity (as workers potentially get less involved in workplace politics and distractions), and an increased resilience to natural disasters and terrorism as a smaller proportion of their workforce is ever co-located. Service levels may also improve if some employees can be "always on line" to meet 24/7 customer demands.

For individuals, working from home may also lead to improvements in their work/life balance, a reduction in time spent travelling, and the opportunity to work from where they want largely when and how they want. More broadly as already noted above, we may all benefit from decreased pollution and traffic congestion, and from reduced resource usage, as and if we re-enter an age like that before the Industrial Revolution in which for many the "workplace" and "homeplace" were largely one and the same.

A New State of Living

The mass individualism of the twentieth century may have been a very good thing. However, it went too far in permitting so many of us to travel as we please and to regularly consume globally. We therefore need to rebalance our lifestyles, place the needs of the future majority ahead of current, individual whim, and establish more sustainable daily routines. As noted above, this is likely to involve many people working from home at least some of the time. More broadly, it will also involve sourcing food and other products far more locally. Potentially, this may involve the construction of vertical farms to allow mass agriculture in cities. It may also involve the creation of 3D printing bureaus in most towns and cities in order that products can be transported digitally for local replication.

More local living does not imply that we should never travel abroad or stop all global trade. However, it does mean that we need to start treating global travel and non-local consumption as a privilege rather than a right.