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July 02, 2004
Face-to-face
In Understanding Power once again, chapter eight, a woman asks Chomsky what impact he believes the Internet might have on activism. This converstation took place somewhere between 1993 and 1996. One of his points describes why even an introvert such as yours truly considers Grenoble a good location to work for Sun, where people are constantly getting up from behind their desks and talking face-to-face:
I mean, there's something about human beings that makes face-to-face contact very different from banging around on a computer terminal and getting some noise coming back--that's very impersonal, and it breaks down human relations.
Sun management has not pushed our work from home program with the intent of keeping people even more divided and conquered. Yet, you can feel the effects of the program having been in place for a while if you work in Grenoble for a while, then take a trip to Santa Clara. Some people almost seem surprised when you show up unannounced at their office. If they're there.
It's true that face-to-face meetings can involve lots of non-work. If you measure results, however, you hardly care. People who engage in lots of non-work at work get to stay late and make up for lost (sic) time.
Posted by Mark at July 2, 2004 06:40 AM