Will a man's home still be his castle in the information age? Jonathan Somers 265-97-1077 CS 4345 Colin Potts December 10, 1996 Microprocessors are infiltrating the most unexpected minutiae of our daily life. Our microwave ovens know the "recipes" for popping our popcorn and reheating our pizza. Our televisions remember our favorite channels and our CD players can turn cramped living rooms into vast concert halls. Our thermostats cut our power bills when we're not home and our telephones know who we call the most. We owe all of this and much more to the miraculous chip. Yet this technology is in its infancy, and the emergence of devices which are both intelligent and interconnected promises a new world of home convenience. What will happen as the tiny brains in our homes begin to speak to each other, to cooperate as silicon servants? Will our lives really be easier; will we really have fewer details to worry about, and hence more time for play? What role will the personal computer play in this evolving concept of an intelligent home? Can the vast power of the Internet accomplish even the simplest goals such as keeping all the clocks in our house displaying the same time? Over and above these lowly issues, will the merging of telephone, television, and computer into a single appliance really yield a richer, better-educated, better-entertained home life? Perhaps the greatest significance of intelligent devices in the home is the impact upon our professional lives. As the bandwidth into and within our residences increases, the potential for telecommuters and virtual offices will grow. Is this necessarily a good thing? Will spending less time on the road really translate to more time being productive? Again, will the single "information appliance" be an asset or a liability? This paper will demonstrate that while the core technologies are clearly intended to improve our quality of life, there are real risks to the contrary and real challenges to architects, industrial designers, building contractors, and information engineers (hardware and software alike). Convergence: The challenges ahead for white-collar workers As more and more of the workforce begins to work at home, we must learn to deal with both existing and new problems. The existing problems are worker diligence, productivity, and ethics in a relatively remote situation. In most centralized workplaces, the employer can readily monitor the employee's activities and work habits; the employee can readily communicate with subordinates, peers, and superiors face to face; the employee can focus on the work at hand with freedom from non-work-related distractions (though the number and legitimacy of work-related distractions is an issue). However, additional problems are fast approaching due to the convergence of several key technologies. These technologies include: The telephone a low-bandwidth, low-fidelity information channel for voice and data, but with excellent switched-circuit (i.e. point-to-point) capabilities The television a high-bandwidth, high-fidelity information channel for audio and video, though unidirectional and broadcast-based The computer a tremendous tool for knowledge storage, processing, and interaction, while difficult to use (and even more difficult to interconnect) when compared to the telephone and television Enabling the Big 3 listed above are the emerging ancillary communications media, such as fiber-optic and satellite communications (the long-term replacements for twisted-pair and coax) and ATM and SONET transport protocols for high-speed packet data routing The popular press has heralded the convergence of these technologies as a revolution which will transform society for the better, and produce a higher quality of life for us all. It is easy to understand why: on the surface, you will soon have one wire into your house which provides all your connection needs to the outside world, and you will have one appliance instead of three; both the one wire and the one appliance will be orders of magnitude faster and more versatile than the sum of the individual technologies today. It is indeed exciting, and I as a techno-glutton wait with little patience to reap the benefits. Still I question the value of this merger, and here are some scenarios to illustrate my point: When you're on the road, you'll be on the road more, not less. As workers are able to work more at home, employers will lower their expectations that employees should be located near their "real" office. The incentive to pay for relocation costs will decrease. The motivation to keep an office in the same location when a lease expires or more space is needed will drop — even though employees may have planned their lives and paid dearly to live near the old location. External factors are also at work here; for example, land planning and construction trends are moving away from urban settings and towards suburban sprawl; more highways means longer distances from home to office. On those days when a person must come to the main business location, the average commute length will increase. You're going to pay for the work-at-home privilege. Today, many employers are willing to reimburse knowledge workers for a second analog phone line, so that the employee can have concurrent voice and data access to the main office or to other remotely-located employees. It is relatively easy to monitor legitimate business use of long-distance service on second lines. If phone lines are ultimately replaced by coax or fiber which carry phone, data, and video signals, how will billing be performed? Will employers be quite as willing to pick up the tab for these expenses, when one invoice represents both business and personal use? Will IRS regulations force employers to throw up their hands and stop reimbursing? Furthermore, some employers even provide the computer, modem, and other facilities for their employees who work at home. Many employers know that the employees and their families will inevitably play the occasional game, write a term paper, or surf the Web for personal trivia; as long as there is no cost to the employer, they are tolerant of this. When the computer becomes a general-purpose information appliance, will employers be as willing to provide such appliances to telecommuting employees if the perception is that they will be used for recreation more than they will be used for business? You're going to be distrusted. Employers will want some assurances that telecommuters really are working diligently. Phone calls as "spot checks" may be disguised as requests to schedule meetings or discuss status changes (which could as easily be done via email). Remote telemetry to measure keystroke activity, network usage, and so on may become routine. You're going to feel hounded. Workers will have more difficulty "getting away" from their jobs. If you roll out of bed in the morning and your computer starts complaining that you owe your boss a status report before you even climb in the shower, what does that do to your sense of privacy? Your family will not appreciate your opportunity to work at home; they will resent it. Access to work will present conflicts if the same appliance is used for recreation. ("Mom, we can't watch Sesame Street on the computer because Dad's still working on his spreadsheet.") Even if the home worker isn't actually using the appliance, the fact that one appliance facilitates both work and play will force both to congregate into the same room, with consequent distractions and scheduling problems. Spouses who both work at home will have it tougher, not easier. Despite the fact that technology costs continue to fall, it is unclear what the price point will be on these new information appliances. Still it is safe to say that a combination telephone/television/computer will cost more than the most expensive single such appliance today which is typically the computer. Will couples where each partner telecommutes be able to cost-justify two such appliances? Will they somehow timeshare, with all the attendant scheduling problems? Building automation a utopian solution for a dystopian problem? The house is a machine for living in. - Le Corbusier, architect To understand how building automation can help as our solution, we must understand what it is and what capabilities it offers. Unfortunately there are few agreed-upon working definitions of what building automation actually is, so I am going to offer up my own: Building automation is the use of algorithms to directly monitor and control the operation of a building's various subsystems and appliances for the benefit of its owners and occupants. Several points are in order here. I deliberately avoided the terms hardware and software because they are not intrinsic to intelligent building design. For example, a mechanical setback thermostat must base its actions on multiple criteria — actual temperature, time of day, and desired temperatures for various intervals — so it follows a primitive algorithm, despite the absence of what we consider hardware or software. In fact, it is largely as intelligent as its digital counterpart. There are much more complex algorithms in use for zoned HVAC, and certainly digital electronics facilitates this. My emphasis here is that the algorithms, not the technology, make a building "intelligent". I also refer to both occupants and owners. These are not always one and the same. An obvious example is the rented residential or leased business unit. When the owner agrees to pick up the cost of utilities as part of the flat-rate rent or lease schedule, it behooves the owner to monitor and cost-contain those utilities. Intelligent buildings act as owner "agents" in this regard. However, the owner/occupant relationship is not limited to a business nature. Parents are owners while their children are typically just occupants; hosts are owners and their guests are occupants. Both categories benefit when a building can act autonomously. There are many technologies which can potentially interface to a building, but which I rule out when they are not an intrinsic part of the building itself. Most notable is another ongoing convergence, that of the cellular phone and the personal digital assistant. These technologies have fantastic possibilities as amanuenses for us, as individuals, and they can also indirectly affect the actions of a building. The operative word here is indirectly. This is a very fine distinction in many cases, but a smart clock which remains within a building is treated as a part of the building for the purposes of this paper, whereas a PDA's scheduler which follows an individual is not. The interoperability (and distinctiveness) of PDAs and smart homes would make a fascinating topic for a paper all by itself. Finally, I must stress that the design of an intelligent home does not simply refer to a home which has a computer or an ISDN link. These features are not intrinsic to the building, and can easily be transferred from place to place. Some people think of the "user interface" to a smart house as being a graphical UI on a PC in the kitchen or a closet somewhere. When designing an intelligent home, an essential ingredient has to be offering intelligent affordances throughout the building. In this sense, every wall switch, lamp, thermostat, alarm sensor, telephone, and so forth should be thought of as the house's natural user interface. There's an important inference that the nature of intelligence in a building should be highly distributed, and that a PC really only makes sense as a high-fidelity monitoring and management tool, and not as "the brains" of the house. More important, however: To the extent that these affordances are familiar objects, and to the extent that their role in an intelligent house is simply an extension of their normal role, this model helps normal inhabitants and their guests to "use" (i.e. to live in) the home with confidence. Having said this, what functions make a building intelligent? In general, I have found that these fall into four major categories: COMFORT AND CONVENIENCE: features aimed at saving work or effort The most common example of home automation is lighting control — lights which automatically turn on when a room is occupied. This may mean more than simple motion sensors and timers, however. In his book "The Road Ahead", Bill Gates describes several approaches to (and problems with) lighting automation: I went to a party at a house that had a computerized home-control system. The lights were set to go out at ten-thirty, which is when the owner usually went to bed. At ten-thirty the party was still going on, but sure enough, the lights went out. The host was away for what seemed like a long time trying to get them back on. Some office buildings use motion detectors to control the lighting in each room. If there hasn't been any major activity for a few minutes, the lights go off. People who sit nearly motionless at their desks learn to wave their arms periodically. Other examples of work-saving comfort features include: Thermostats which "learn" the patterns of occupants through AI techniques and automatically manage climate control without manual "programming" TVs and stereos which automatically mute when a doorbell or telephone rings Telephones which automatically route calls to answering machines/voicemail when the occupants are normally asleep Telephones as "user interfaces" within the home to remotely set thermostats, turn off lights, arm/disarm alarms, and so on Clocks which are synchronized by signals provided by the electric utility Software to let you monitor and control all intelligent devices from any PC using graphical UIs wrapped around actual blueprints of your residence Appliances which communicate with each other to reduce the number of tasks the occupants must perform This last example points out the need for distributed intelligence in the home; a central information appliance need not be the sole "brains" of the house. For example, an alarm clock and a coffee pot can "collaborate" so that if the family wants to sleep in a little later on Saturday, they need only set one timer instead of two. They can also act as "agents" for each other; if a person spies a TV show they want to have taped, but the VCR is out being repaired, any other smart appliance should be able to store the request on behalf of the VCR, and inform it once reconnected that it has assigned tasks to perform. ECONOMICS: features aimed at saving money, most often in energy costs Lights which turn off when a room is not occupied Large appliances (dishwashers, clothes washers/dryers) which automatically run on command from the power company during off-peak times HVAC systems which route climate control only to occupied areas (for example, heating or cooling only the bedrooms at nighttime) SECURITY: features aimed at protecting both occupants and property Learning the use patterns of occupants, and mimicking them when occupants are away to give a "lived-in" look Turning on all interior lights (momentarily blinding the intruder) and flashing all exterior lights (complementing sirens to alert neighbors, as well as advertising which home is in trouble) upon forced entry Telephone access to allow home to be remotely armed (should the owner forget to do so when leaving) and to inspect home status Tracking the scheduled locations of the owners and notifying them via telephone in the event of a security breach LIVELIHOOD: features supporting the professions of the occupants These can be either entrepreneurs building a business at home or telecommuting "virtual office" workers Telephone systems which use caller ID and voicemail to screen out personal calls during business hours, or to route calls to different sections of the home based on personal or business nature of the call Collaboration software ("groupware") which enables workers to jointly produce knowledge while widely separated in both space and time ISDN, cable, fiber, and satellite as high-bandwidth information paths to help remote workers stay connected to their offices Of course, the key tool for telecommuters may be the information appliance (the entertainer formerly known as "television/computer/telephone"?). However, there are still real issues which must be worked out before this appliance enters widespread use. At present, the phone and cable companies are in an industrial war to determine which medium will prevail for delivery of the information. Technology standards such as ATM and SONET are coming out of their lab settings but are not yet widely available; other standards such as digital HDTV have been evolving without successful coalescence for almost twenty years. From an ergonomics point of view, it's important to note that work-related tasks typically require little motion and considerable detail, which lead to "up-close" viewing, whereas entertainment and educational tasks often require rapid motion and a sense of immersion, which lead to "across the room" viewing. The design of workstations to accommodate both is still an open issue. Problem/solution domain spaces When discussing the problems of convergence and the solutions which are possible through building automation, there are many different axes which can be considered. Thoroughly covering each problem or solution in all axes is beyond the scope of this paper. However, I would be remiss if I did not identify them. Each profession should consider how their craft can contribute, and the list seems a valuable tool for contemplating this. Enforcing the separation of "work" from "play" for the individual. There are a very few people in western civilization whose career provides ultimate satisfaction and creative release. Knowledge workers seem to comprise quite a minute percentage of that already-small number. For those of us comprising the vast majority, while we search for this Zenlike union, we want our work time to be quality work time, and our rest time to be quality rest time — highly segregated from one another. A given tool should help one work harder and smarter, with greater dedication and attention, keeping playtime at bay; the same tool should enable the converse when one is at play. Auto-screening personal calls during work hours and vice-versa is one prime example of such a tool. Time concurrency vs. space concurrency of work and play for the family. In the present and for the immediate future, most work-at-homers must contend with a time-concurrency problem. Some occupants will need to work at the same time others are pursuing their home life. Segregation of spaces is the current solution; most such workers dedicate a room (or a corner, at least) as the home office or "the work space". Soundproofing plays a vital role in this approach. However, segregation will eventually cease to be viable. In the farther future, as the universal information appliance proliferates, we will see an increase in space concurrency; that is to say, the household will cease to have a separate room dedicated as "the office", and the room which wraps around that appliance will need to serve both work and play needs. By looking for alternate solutions to the time-concurrency problem today, we may also be able to avert the space-concurrency problems looming ahead. Employees (telecommuters) versus entrepreneurs (virtual offices). These two groups have different classes of requirements. The weltanschauung in a classical corporation typically means that a telecommuting employee will be distrusted more, and his activities will be monitored more, than a virtual office worker — simply because the expectations in a virtual corporation are very different. Legal issues and zoning ordinances (such as those which prohibit business customers in residential areas) will place heavier restrictions on entrepreneurs. Benefits to the employee vs. benefits to the employer. Tight climate control is a direct benefit to the employee, but benefits the employer only in the indirect sense that it increases the employee's performance. Conversely, remote telemetry to check on an employee's work habits is a benefit to the employer, but there is no direct benefit to the employee other than continued employment (and then only if their work habits are acceptable). When evaluating any technology — and the likelihood of its cost being borne by one or both parties — one must weigh those which offer direct benefits to both employee and employer. Staying connected vs. the need for privacy. There are times when the home worker needs to be highly connected to activities at the main office; conference calling and electronic whiteboarding are valuable tools to this end. Equally important are the times when a home worker needs to be highly disconnected from activities at the main office. Part of the appeal of telecommuting is the ability to work at home without the distractions of idle conversations with coworkers, calls from customers, questions about unrelated projects, and so on. At these times, asynchronous messaging (email and vmail) become essential tools. Having control over the priority level and type of interruptions — with finer granularity than "accept" vs. "reject" all calls — is key. Looking at solutions within each building subsystem Configurable spaces A single room can be reconfigured automatically to serve both business and leisure purposes. This problem is not new to our technological age, though in the past it has been solved with furniture design and interior decorating, as opposed to the design of the building itself. For example, the roll-top writing desk was invented to hide clutter when one was not actually working. In the case of the intelligent home, we may see the idea of configurable spaces extend beyond the furnishings and contents of each room; the rooms themselves will transmute based on the needs of the occupant or occupants. This transmutation need not take the form of rearranging the placement of walls. In an interview with the author, Prof. Chuck Eastman of the Georgia Tech College of Architecture points out that the cost considerations almost certainly outweigh the moderate benefits in almost every case. "There's even a growing body of evidence that the massive investments which many employers make in modular office cubicles has not been cost-effective. In the end, these cubicles rarely get reconfigured — and in cases where they are, it has been found that simply tearing down and rebuilding partitions of studs and sheetrock would have been less expensive over the long haul." Perhaps less interesting than moveable walls is the notion of fixtures which hide or reveal themselves based on the activities with the room. Again turning to "The Road Ahead", one of the features Gates mentions is the use of a "wall of monitors" in several rooms of his own house. "Recessed into the east wall [of the reception hall, in this case] will be twenty-four video monitors, each with a 40-inch picture tube, stacked four high and six across. These monitors will work cooperatively to display large images for artistic, entertainment, or business purposes. I had hoped that when the monitors weren't in use they could literally disappear into the woodwork. I wanted the screens to display woodgrain patterns that matched their surroundings. Unfortunately I could never achieve anything convincing with current technology, because a monitor emits light while real wood reflects it. So I settled for having the monitors disappear behind wood panels when they're not in use." Ironically, Gates expresses great dissatisfaction with a seemingly more innocuous (relatively speaking) automation trick. Just a few pages later, he writes: "Not all of our experiments in the guest cottage have been successful. For example, I had installed speakers that descended from the ceiling when needed. The speaker enclosures were to be suspended away from walls, in an optimal acoustic position. But after trying this out in the cottage, it reminded me too much of James Bond gadgets, so in the main house we've settled for concealed speakers." So a wall of camouflaged monitors is eminently practical, but moveable speakers are too gimmicky! Still, the "James Bond" reference is a valid objection — despite the apparent contradiction — and both engineers and designers must be conscious of the ever-changing chasm between contemporary and futuristic settings. Other technologies which could allow rooms to change their shape and appearance include liquid-crystal windows, which are akin to giant versions of the common LCD display. Rather than displaying image information, however, they simply become opaque or transparent based on the presence or absence of current. Several companies such as Ryobi and DrapeBoss make electrically-operable blinds and shutters, which could be used to hide a "nook" containing a small work area within a larger multipurpose room; pocket doors could certainly be operated in a similar fashion — revealing or concealing workstations and other home-office tools, as with Gates' "wall of monitors". Rearranging spaces is only one way accommodate different needs at different times. Another is to control access to spaces. In today's society, access to residential spaces is generally a binary decision - a person is admitted to the entire space, or they are not. (Either you have a key, or you do not. Interestingly, almost all spaces do not consider the identity of the person being admitted; only a few security systems allow different passwords for different people.) This is not the case for many commercial spaces, in which employees are admitted to spaces based on the needs of their jobs. However, the ability to control access to space based on identity (and other factors, such as time) is becoming more desirable in a residential setting. One application is allowing utility workers such as plumbers or phone installers into selected spaces while you are away. Another is to allow electronically-ordered goods (such as groceries) to be delivered to your kitchen, without allowing access to the rest of your house. The ability to control access in this way might greatly enhance the coupling of physical and virtual spaces in the future. Lighting control Moving from the ridiculous to the sublime, there are several different ways in which lighting can separate work from play. Scene lighting is already a common architectural practice. In scene lighting, only a subset of a room's lighting is illuminated at any given time. For example, in a combination living room/home theater/home office, the "living scene" might consist of narrow-cone halogen spotlights to illuminate paintings or sculptures; a "theater scene" may consist of low, soft indirect light against the walls opposite the screen; an "office scene" may consist of task lighting at a desk or workstation. The choice of diffused or focused light, as well as direct or indirect lighting, can be used to produce shadows which set a mood, or to reduce shadows for working purposes. Another lighting possibility takes advantage of the common convention that homes are illuminated by incandescent lamps, whereas offices are illuminated by fluorescent lamps. A room can utilize both: the house can decide which set of lamps is appropriate based on the task at hand. This is really just a variation on scene lighting, in which the type of lamp (spectral as well as focal attributes) is the variable instead of the nature of the illuminated surface. Still another lighting possibility is the use of colored illumination as a visual cue. This builds upon the spectral factors of the incandescent/fluorescent strategy. Colored lenses would almost certainly yield too stark a result when used alone; but more subtle effects are possible when colored lamps supplement white light, or when white lamps selectively illuminate colored surfaces. For example, illuminating blue surfaces to give a room a "blue" feeling could be used to conjure up a cooler, working mood, whereas illuminating green surfaces (especially when plants are included) can produce a livelier, more relaxed atmosphere. Climate control Very tight climate control is essential in work areas. Wide or rapid changes in temperature produce discomfort, which can be distracting. (Any time the home worker must get up from a desk, they may see the daily paper and feel an urge to read it, or they may stop to put on a favorite music selection, or they may engage in conversation with family members who may be present — any of which detracts from the work flow.) One building engineer who was interviewed for this paper said that some large office buildings maintain temperatures to within an accuracy of just 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit of specification; normal residential climate control is only accurate to within +/- 2 degrees Fahrenheit of specification. Also, discomfort may cause someone to leave their work area to adjust the thermostat, which provides opportunity for further distractions. It's also important to note that an optimum work environment is typically cooler than most people care for in their normal home life. Cooler atmosphere tends to promote one's attention span, whereas a warmer room invites relaxation. Zoned HVAC becomes a key component of a building's intelligence — not just to allow different temperatures in different rooms, but to allow temperatures in a given room to vary throughout the day should the room's mission change. It's also important to note that rooms do not reach requested temperature immediately, and so the problem of anticipating target temperatures in advance becomes significant. While temperature and humidity are important to humans, they are far more critical to computers. High temperatures are the enemy of today's high-performance personal computers, particularly when lots of internal peripherals are added (which generate more heat). High humidity has little effect on solid-state electronics, but can wreak havoc with the electrostatic process used in laser printers. Low humidity, of course, can lead to electrostatic discharge — another cause for concern in residential environments. Communications Many people have developed a Pavlovian response to answer a ringing telephone, no matter what the circumstances. This is completely unnecessary; another option is to simply not ring every phone of the house on every single call. The technology is available now to route calls within the home based on caller ID, time of day, a central access database, permission passwords, and so on. Calls can be outright rejected, or they can be deferred into voicemail for later processing, or they can be "announced" to let the occupants choose whether to take the call. The following (rather colloquial) quotation from the comp.home.automation newsgroup summarizes what one enthusiast accomplished with a single-line phone, a voicemail card, and an RS-232 Caller ID interface: "My girlfriend calls from her home. The system looks up her number (delivered via Caller*ID) in the caller database and retrieves her name and her access level. Since she has a pretty high access level (;-), the system says "please wait while I see if your party is available..." The system then announces her call using the voice synthesizer: "Incoming call from Your Girlfriend on line one!" and waits for me to pick up an extension. If I don't pick up within a certain period of time, the system tells her "I'm sorry, your party is unavailable right now. Please leave a message at the tone." Her call is then routed to the voice mail system. Some telemarketing scum from the local newspaper calls me for the fifth time this week trying to get me to subscribe. Since this particular telesleaze has called me before, their number is in my database. Anticipating their next call, I've tagged their record to play a custom announcement and then hang up. Thus, the droid hears: 'Hello sleazebag. I've repeatedly asked your firm NOT to call me. Since you're too dense to comprehend what the word "no" means, you get this little spiel. Then I hang up on you. ' "Freda calls my home late at night when I'm asleep. Although Freda's call would normally be announced, since it's late at night, I'm trying to sleep, and I have indicated (via her access level) that I don't find Freda's calls to be worth waking up for, [so] the system routes Freda's call directly to the voice mail system. "Someone dials *67 prior to dialing my number in order to block the delivery of their Caller*ID information. The system answers and plays a prerecorded message explaining that the number they have dialed does not accept unidentified calls. The caller is then given an opportunity to enter a PIN/pass code combination. If a valid PIN/pass code is entered, the system behaves as it normally would had that person called with an unblocked number. Callers without a valid PIN get dumped. This screens out the jerks while still allowing "known" callers to get through. "Joe Blow has a chronic problem dialing his phone; at least once a week he dials my number while trying to reach his therapist (his shrink's phone number is one digit off from mine). Now, whenever Joe calls, he gets a polite prerecorded message saying 'Hi Joe — you've dialed the wrong number again!' " These features were originally designed into software written over five years ago, and required a dedicated telephone processing card. However they can be accomplished quite readily today using almost any modem equipped with voicemail capabilities — a widely-available feature in the current generation of "Hayes-compatible" modems. Today the telephone is used for many different types of communications — voice, fax, and data, to name a few. Concurrent calls are made possible by having multiple lines. ISDN service promises to improve on this by offering multiple channels of information at the same time. While most equipment today does not take advantage of its features, ISDN offers such capabilities as dynamically adjusting channel speeds based on demand. For example, you can initiate a data call at a full 128kbps using all channels; if you then need to pick up a phone to place a voice call, ISDN allows the data rate to drop to 64kps, freeing a channel for use in the voice call. The full 128Kbps rate automatically resumes when the voice call terminates. ISDN also offers not only Caller*ID, but also the type of call being placed — a digital signal lets your equipment know that an incoming call is a voice, modem, or FAX call, to help route the call appropriately. One of the basic requirements of staying connected includes the availability of volumes of on-line information. This can include the entire Internet, although in practical terms it often simplifies to corporate intranets. Anytime a worker has to leave the room or get up from his/her desk to locate needed information, there is risk of becoming distracted. Making reference works, policies and procedures, and other work-related documents available on-line reduces this need, helping to keep the worker focused. With the size of many technical documents spiraling upward, high-bandwidth access is becoming increasingly important. A handicap of the telco system is that the low fidelity — 300 to 3000 Hz for a phone call vs. 20 to 20,000 Hz for the range of human hearing — leaves standard speakerphones giving a sense of great distance. One technology which may come of age in the future is higher-fidelity telephony over ISDN, coax, or fiber. This offers an effective compromise between contemporary phones and the extremely high bandwidth needed for bi-directional video. Higher fidelity audio can produce much more cost-effective "telepresence". Other tools for communicating include soft smart electronic whiteboards for remote collaboration. These allow remote workers to present and manipulate ideas using a chalkboard metaphor. Several different whiteboard techniques have been deployed experimentally, and at least one (Microsoft's Internet Explorer) is widely available (if not in widespread use). Other options Given the range of possibilities which are afforded by these technologies, what are the possible outcomes for the at-home working class? The likely scenario, based on present trends, is that society can adapt to the issue without consciously trying to solve it. Employers may simply increase their trust in telecommuters. Ultimately this could lead to the abandonment of the forty-hour work week for telecommuters, with greater emphasis instead on goal accomplishment. The current trend towards contract labor may favor this as well. (This does not solve the morale problem for the employee — only the fiscal problem for the employer.) The pessimistic scenario is that society may decide that telecommuting is simply not a viable option for most information workers. While this is a possibility, it is not very likely. Huge investments in remote/mobile technology are being made by many Fortune 500 companies to enable workers in such areas as outside sales, field service and support, and delivery route accounting. It is likely that these investments will be leveraged to telecommuters as well, which may result in ad-hoc adaptation of pieces of technology to suit missions other than those for which they were originally designed. The optimistic scenario is for professionals in each of the relevant fields to consciously try to accommodate the needs of telecommuters, using the techniques described in this paper. Ultimately the solution consists of more than just deploying technology. It implies changes in the mindsets of both employees and employers. It involves expanding the creative focus of architects and engineers. It involves cost-justifications and profitability analyses by the employers and by construction firms who must select where and how such buildings can be sold, as well as realtors who must see the fit between a telecommuting homebuyer's needs and the buildings which are adapted to fit these needs. Recommendations This paper has focused almost exclusively on the possibilities offered through the design of intelligent residential buildings. There are many more technologies which are applicable to the central office side of the equation — the commercial and industrial building site. One recommendation is to explore what is technologically possible, and what is economically practical, from the employer's physical point of view. There are also opportunities to explore in the area of multi-family residential buildings, such as apartments, townhouses, and condominiums. Just as many such complexes offer community swimming, tennis, and recreation halls, the author proposes also offering superhighway "access clusters" within these mini-communities. Instead of providing one work area per residential unit, a shared suite could offer a dedicated ISDN or T-1 connection to the Internet in the short term, and benefit from the cable/telephone merger when it becomes available — allowing tenants who use corporate intranets or run virtual offices to speed their connections by sharing their access. Shared printing, copying, and fax facilities can also be offered. Subject to zoning restrictions, other possible amenities include shared conference rooms, a 24-hour/7-day security guard, and even a shared receptionist/administrative assistant. Employer trust in employee work habits would be much higher, although there are clear tradeoffs with respect to corporate confidential information moving through such common areas. No such projects were found in the literature for this paper, nor through the various interviews; perhaps a more thorough search would turn up examples of this approach. The fundamental problem, the root cause, for the approaching conflict is lack of awareness among the professions that there is a problem. Within this context, my individual recommendations fit into one category: All of the cited professions must educate themselves as to the nature of the problem and begin applying their skills in stepwise increments towards resolving the problem. Some of the specific increments have been suggested herein; others have not yet been invented.