Microsoft UK recently released a study done by The Future Laboratory’ called ‘Microsoft: Work and Mobile Cities’ which looked at how the trend in mobile and remote working would impact the actual landscape around us.

Bill Gates used to quote the line ‘people always over estimate the impact of technology shifts over a two year period, but under-estimate them over a ten year period’. My explanation of this syndrome is that people often lose sight of the broader ‘ecosystem’ dependencies and obstacles. They see a demo of some nifty technology fresh from the lab and expect to see it in people’s hands across the land overnight, but they forget the dependencies on producing at scale, distributing the product, training people how to use it, often the contributory components like connectivity. Conversely, once those elements have sorted themselves out over a bit longer period of a few years, people can see the direct uses and impacts, but often neglect to consider the secondary and tertiary effects that those uses then foster.

The ‘Microsoft: Work and Mobile Cities’ report attempts to look out beyond the current trends and gadgetry and try to extrapolate to this ‘beyond ten year’ horizon. One of the notable longer term effects anticipated is how the work practices interplay with the environment. Not the carbon footprint and saving the planet environment. But the cityscape environment in which we live and work. The study actually has crafted artist visualisations of London, Brighton, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth and Birmingham.

In much the same way that Service Oriented Architecture is changing the topology of the conventional IT’s spaghetti of static and complex systems. Dynamic work is similarly rewriting the inner working and layout of the urban schematic and Future Laboratory has laid out an intriguing sketch of how this might evolve.

Some compelling numbers on the economic imperative for dynamic work in the imposing economic conditions from insurance company RSA highlighted by Katie Ledger in her Portfolio Working blog.

“When asked about the prospects for their businesses during this economic downturn, one third (34%) of respondents thought they would definitely be able to grow or maintain their level of business…A possible reason for self-employed home workers not feeling the effects of the current financial climate might be the advantages they have over larger corporations. Respondents felt the top two advantages are being able to provide a more flexible service to accommodate client needs and clients knowing that the owner-manager is the single point of contact.”

The respondents cited both flexibility on how they work as well as the economic, social and ecological benefits of less commuting as two of the top benefits to working outside the traditional office.

Good piece from MSNBC on telecommuting subtitled ‘Employers reconsider traditional in-the-office work week’ looking at the economic drivers to more flexible work.

“Some employers are reconsidering the traditional five-days-in-the-office pattern as the national average price for a gallon of gas hovers around $4. The idea is to whittle down commuting costs for workers by allowing them to work from home or switch to four days of 10 hours each… The [Telework Coalition] estimates that more than 26 million Americans now telecommute at least some days, which would be about 18 percent of people employed nationwide.”