May 24, 2011

Home Sweet Home: The simple life, 21st century style

The family home has probably never been changing more than it is now. Even in the postwar boom, the lifestyle was basically an extension of the former way of life with more gadgets. Now, the gadgets are running the world and they’re also dictating the lifestyle. In the past, something like contents insurance meant clothes, a few appliances, and some valuables. Now, the “appliances” are home businesses, often working around the world.

The lifestyle change has been more than physical. It’s mental. There’s now a second generation growing up which has no idea what the lifestyle of the 1990s was all about. A world without Facebook? Impossible. A world without iPhones, forget it.

The employment market is also in the melting pot. As the New Economy takes shape, it’s making less sense by the second to keep people in offices and commuting mindlessly back and forth. It’s not only wasteful, it’s expensive, using up time most people can use to make money, not spend it.

This is only the very early beginning of a total reworking of society into something far more rational and less habituated than its ancestry. Even the “traditional” working hours, 9-5, are a version of the old agricultural working house, sunrise to sunset. A bit obsolete, if you happen to be working in four different time zones from home.

The internet is the cradle of the new society, barely an infant in terms of even foreseeable future technology. Mobile devices are just getting started, and smart homes are rapidly taking the place of “four walls”. Medical and scientific devices, which are driving a lot of other technology, are doing the same thing. It’s worth noting that somebody tried to make a Star Trek tricorder, technology set 400 years in the future, and found they could do it easily.

The future is rarely obvious, but it’s always predictable in one sense- It takes the line of least resistance. In this case, the line of least resistance is technology, and a lot of it, getting simpler and cheaper. The mobile phone started as a gimmick, and has wound up as an “office in your pocket”, simply because that was the easiest way to create mobile communications technology. Why carry around an IT department, when you can do it all remotely?

Home, therefore, is now a communications hub, social plug-in, entertainment nexus, business centre, you name it. It’s no longer the suburban dream, but part of an extremely mobile, interlaced series of networks. Even the family car has become a sort of mobile office/ service, able to do business, shopping and even admin work on the move.

With this has come the change in employment from employees to contractors. More people are self-employed now than ever before, and the process is accelerating as outsourcers snap up professionals and skilled workers. Home for these people is work and work is home. Typically, home insurance is as likely to be insuring a home office or other service as well as the standard home fittings and features.

It’s still home, but home has got a lot bigger.
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6 comments:

Aulia Rahman said...

Artikelnya sangat menarik. Ditunggu tulisan berikutnya.
Salam dari Jogja :)

http://fcep.uii.ac.id/

NURA said...

ass,
I know home insurance,coz read your article.
thank for sharing.

H. Asrul Hoesein said...

Nice post ... ... Yes mate, the more narrow the world now, due to growing technology ... the Internet ... the virtual world, facebook, faceblog, bloggers etc., who do not know, all must know, although a variety of knowledge person. Because too knowing and too independent ethics in sight seemed to be at number two or number so. Finally, almost no character (akhlak)
True friend that, it looks like the current generation does not understand a little. And even though it was past but need to be a reflection of today and the future. He is a virtual world seems to have become their home, work environment, so it should be used as possible, it is efficiency; certainly expanded and establish networks with fixed her character .... I wait for ya pal shar business. Maybe bias networking with my business ... .. hahahahaha ... .... Hopefully.

General Insurance said...

thanks about the information,keep posting :)

MF_A said...

Mantabs, artikel yang menarik.. salam kenal dari bumi malioboro...

Biep458 said...

thanks for sharing this usefull information.

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