From a production standpoint, one may believe that it’s necessary to congregate work in one place as a condition for the division of labor. Uninhabited office towers and buildings seemed like a fantasy fiction setting in 2019. This is akin to people not imagining leaving their homes and farms to work in factories in highly condensed areas 300 years ago. Fantasy is turning into reality, and this shift is happening again due to social, environmental, and economic forces that are converging to transfer the locus of work back to home.
Interestingly enough, Alvin Toffler, author of The Third Wave, introduced the concept of an “electronic cottage” as a home-centered space where most of the white-collar work can be performed with the support of technology. In Toffler’s (1980) own words:
Today it takes an act of courage to suggest that our biggest factories and office towers may, within our lifetimes, stand half empty, reduced to use as ghostly warehouses or converted into living space. Yet this is precisely what the new mode of production makes possible: a return to cottage industry on a new, higher, electronic basis, and with it a new emphasis on the home as the center of society. (p. 194)
The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that although face-to-face communication is important in working settings since it can convey nonverbal messages, some tasks do not require much or any external contact or only require it occasionally. Simultaneously, issues of workflow, management, and productivity, along with problems of self-directness and motivation, may arise, but the “electronic cottage” is here to stay. Toffler introduced this concept in his book in 1980, but the concept of remote work has been a part of our society longer than you may realize.