Remote Is All In Your Mind

I had lunch with a friend yesterday and we talked about work.  Her job, like most others, requires her to go in to the office every day (that's an hour commute for her in good weather...each way).

So, we ended up talking about how I telecommute.

She thought that was so odd to be working with people world-wide over WebEx and other "productivity" tools.

My point back to her was this:  well, most of it's email and phone calls.  It's just the same as what you do every day.

And then I think it dawned on her- how the "remoteness" was all in her mind.  

I mean, if you have an IT job, chances are you're either heads-down (like programmers) all day and don't want to be bothered, or you're emailing and calling people.

So, does it matter where you do that work?

Does it matter where the person you're contacting is located?  (well, besides the time zone consideration)

It's quite sad and irritating that modern society is ready to embrace technology like laptops and cellphones, trusting in the technology, but they expect the working life to go on as it has for the past centuries.

Does that really make sense???

Why make all of these advances when we're not going to embrace the life changes that accompany them?