Does wifi spell death to the 9-to-5?

Came across an interesting article the other day entitled "Wifi spells death of 9-to-5" which you can read @ http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2008/09/04/wi-fi-spells-death-of-9-to-5-by-2033-91466-21670008/

The article raises the question and makes a fairly good case for why wifi may indeed set many a worker free who in today's world find themselves tethered to what is effectively a broadband leash. Being an entrepreneur, the word "freedom" holds a very special meaning for me... one that is dear to my heart and central to my motivation. I would love to believe that wifi will indeed set the world free from dreary, unimaginative corporate environments but I think it will be a confluence of technologies ranging from wimax (wifi's big brother that cover miles versus meters), 3G and whatever other wide area wireless internet technologies come down the techno pike. And... despite the fact that I'm in the wifi business (http://www.freewifihotspotsoftware.com/), I'm thankful for it all because I believe that what the world of work needs is revolution.

This new generation coming up has been raised on PC's, laptops,. wireless technologies and entertainment that mocks the corporate structure such as The Office, movies like Fight Club, Office Space, and of course Dilbert. I've suffered many hours myself in such environments and to think that one day future generations could be speared the broadband leash is a bright thought indeed.

And it all makes sense in the grand scheme of things... from a technological point of view. We started out as hunter / gatherers who learned to farm instead of hunt. From farming, workers migrated to factories that built machines that automated farm labour. Next computers and robotics automated a lot of the factory work and we found ourselves in the service economy, essentially selling factory output and whatever jobs where created around that activity. It went down something like that anyhow.

The beauty of our economy is the level of creativity if affords the worker in terms of having access to and control over the tools of wealth production. Just like robotics "liberated" factory workers, I suspect that computers and specifically wireless technology will have the eventual effect of almost completely liberating office workers.

Even today, many call centers are taking calls from North America in India and these folks are logging into contact management databases located across the ocean. That being the case, it's not a stretch of the imagination that office workers might be "allowed" or even "encouraged" to log into the corporate server from home or a cafe or wherever given the appropriate level of security. The real issue would be putting together wholesale systems that measure remote employee productivity (and paying accordingly) because the rest of the technology is here now.

Ah well... let's hope that 2020 sees more people happily milling about our wireless internet cafes, parks or the beach etc... I think people were meant to be more or less free (like the hunter gatherer) with mobility built into their everyday work lives.