Working From Home... what?

So the other night, I went home to visit my family for my younger brother’s birthday. Every year we go to Mastro’s Steak House and the amount of alcohol consumed by the elders is always a tad bit too much. However, this time an interesting conversation was brought up about the relationship between the real estate market, the economy and technology.

Thanks to technology such as cellular phones, ability to make conference calls, email, and much more people have started to work our of their homes. So unlike before where people had to get in their car at six am, sit through rush hour traffic, stay in an office all day, then drive back home at six, this dreaded routine has been slowly deteriorating from society. People can do their business in the luxury of staying in their pajamas all day long. However, for the real estate market this new luxury available to the public has become a nasty enemy. People are no longer looking for available building spaces to turn into an office building, which leaves many places up for sale for long periods of time; affecting the revenue for these real estate companies.

However, there are benefits to this change in the way business is conducted on a daily basis.  For one, since people are starting to work out of the house, less people are driving which in the end benefits the lessening amount of pollution being put into the air. Secondly, people have different schedules, which make it difficult to schedule a time and place for everyone to meet and discuss business. But with the existence of the conference call or even emails, this difficult task has been made easier. People can be in all different parts of the world and be able to communicate with one another via technology. For my family at least this has been extremely beneficial for my father and his business to run smoothly. One last benefit that was discussed at the dinner table was how having such great technological devices, allows people who are in an area where no jobs are available to actually get a job. For example, if a person lives in Wisconsin and they can not find any jobs that they are qualified for in their town but they know they are more than qualified for that job in lets say Maine but they can not move because of financial reasons or something; having technology such as skype, email, and cellular phones allows them to stay in their home while also being able to work.

After hearing this conversation, I wondered how many other institutions are being affected by the use of technology or what other parts of our lives are being invaded with technology.  This issue caught my interest and has given me incentive to research more on this issue and gain a greater understanding with this topic. If anyone has any suggestions on where to go from here or anything comment! I would love the advice to help further my research.  Until next time!