Remote isn’t just about the future of work

It’s a bridge to a higher quality of life

Rather than a job – and an office – being the anchor of our social lives, it’s about democratising access to opportunity

[ a thread ] 🌍🏠💻

Remote work should lead to individuals having more choice

Not just spending time with people selected by HR teams, where your deepest common bond is a shared reliance on the economic success of that employer – where if that changes relationships end
Offices have been great for certain demographics – but disqualified/discriminated against almost most others

- single parents
- caring for family members
- health conditions and impairments

The offices makes staying in office work incredibly difficult if not impossible
‘What about young people in shares apartments’

Absolutely.

But is this an issue with remote or the implication of expensive cities and needing to live close enough to commute daily?
‘There are mental health implications’

Absolutely.

But is this a natural issue with remote work, or an implication of COVID-enforced lockdown WFH where we can’t see family, friends, go to coffee shops or travel?
Is remote work perfect? No.
Is every person going to do it? No.

But should every individual have the flexibility to select the mode of work that they happiest with?

Absolutely.

Going forward, millions of people will have that.
There absolutely has to be more rigorous debate on this

I’m very concerned companies replicate ‘office culture’ and expectations remotely and we end up with surveillance tech in people’s homes
The elongation of synchronous expectations would be disastrous

Replicating the office remotely is equally as bad

We need to use this paradigm shift to create a new system that leads to a higher quality of life.
If we just think about remote as the ‘future of work’ remote won’t have the impact it should

This isn’t about replicating what we have – it’s about creating something new which is exponentially better

We need to build ‘the future of living’
Much of the discourse around remote is plain wrong

Almost every ‘issue’ people highlight about it is actually an implication of the high cost living in cities & needing to live close enough to commute daily

And spending more time at the office, & less with people we choose
Remote isn’t perfect

But it replaces a broken system which is a remnant of the industrial revolution

We must get how it replaces it right rather than just thinking about it as an upgrade of what already exists

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Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.

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