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Aucbvax.2262 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!works Mon Jul 13 05:20:44 1981 Working at home >From Joe.Newcomer@CMU-10A Mon Jul 13 05:13:06 1981 Huh? "I'll leave my work behind when I go out the door?" I've never heard such bullshit. First of all, it makes the rather bizarre assumption that I even want to come IN the door. Actually, I would much rather work at home. This means such serious issues as how to get reasonable communication bandwidth between my processor and the rest of its network is a very serious problem. And it also seems to be predicated on the strange (and patently false, in my case) assumption that one WANTS to leave the machine behind. I ENJOY what I'm doing, and want to be able to do it equally well from home or "work". Thus the goal, for example, of giving every CMU researcher a personal machine is not really satisfactory; I need two, or at least a display with a high-bandwidth (say, 10MHz) connection to the "real" machine.

Perhaps in that strange world where people turn their minds off when they leave the office this is a reasonable attitude, but I've never yet met a professional in any area who was capable of doing this. And if you DON'T make the facilities available at home, you are defeating the purpose of having personal workstations: to make individuals more productive. I don't think it is the domain of office automation designers to dictate when and where one has automation available. Assume it needs to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at home and "at work", THEN figure out what the problems are.

I have this from direct experience. When I had a 1200 baud C-100 in the office and a 1200 baud C100 at home, I could work interchangeably in either location. When I got 9600 baud in the office, I worked less at home. Now that I have a Perq in the office, I can't work at home at all. This is a real drag.

I see absolutely no philosophical reason to not provide equal computing facilities at home and at work. The only limitations are technical (like bandwidth) and financial (most companies can't afford two $30K workstations per user). So "office" automation designers should go after those problems, and quit making such totally wedged statements that seem to reflect a basic misunderstanding of what a "personal workstation" really should be!

joe

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