1:00 PM 4/20/2007

Sir, I don't know why you are complaining - we offer so many poor choices!

Okay, nobody actually said that to me, but they might as well say it. I was trying not to pay $16 to sit for 26 minutes on an Amtrak train, but I eventually gave in. I found out there was a bus from Greenbelt Metro to BWI airport, but the first one on Saturday leaves at 8:45, and probably arrives ten minutes before my flight. The PDF of the bus schedule is broken on the Metro site, so I had to call. After talking with the computer for a while, I thought I was making some progress, and then all of the sudden it stopped understanding me. I had to bail out. By the time I got to the human being, I was fussy: I know where the bus goes, I just need to know the times. They seem content that it leaves every 40 minutes. That's somewhat vague. I don't see how BWI is convenient. I didn't want to have to wake up before six, but now I'll have to.

This morning I went for a walk, and I had a strange vision of the future of work. Employment is a bad deal from where I sit, and every job listing I ever saw looked flawed somehow. There are many scams out there, and it's downright difficult to tell the difference between real job postings and gray-area work-from-home pyramid schemes. I am in the paradoxical position of wanting both job security and unpredictable work. The most radical idea I had was something beyond temp work: The web would seem to allow effort to flow back and forth instantaneously like electricity flows on the grid. I think commuting is a total waste of my time, and a tragic loss of human productivity/leisure. If you think of time as a choice between work and play, you're forgetting the third option: Oblivion. Where you get neither. Is it wrong of me to want more of both work and play? And why would I want to be paid extra to spend hours in a car every day? Or maybe be paid the same ammount? Big paycheck or not, we probably need to stop encouraging that kind of dead-weight loss. Sure, a lot of people have strategies for squeezing a little bit of productivity or relaxation out of their commute, but I don't accept the bargain.

But now I have issued a challenge to myself, and it's at the core of the strange vision: Businesses that are not firms, but still somehow seem respectable. Some other format for human cooperation and endeavor, along with a stable mechanism for reward. My big handicap here is my hatred of all things marketing. They introduced all sorts of quality measurement and certification. A little ISO 9000 anybody?

[Under Construction]

last updated 1 year ago #