Moses and the Broadband land
The last time I was working up in Berkshire, (I say 'up' because it is slightly North of me, and I am conditioned to think of North as uphill), I was talking with a friend who also commuted quite a way in to work. I drove 150 miles each day, he drove 90, and we were, as usual, moaning about the interminable traffic and never-ending roadworks.
When we compared travel times, we realised that there was a remarkable similarity between our experiences. Over the 8 or so years we had known each other, the journey time for each of us had increased by 30 minutes. Each successive year we had begun to get up a little bit earlier and get in the car, to continue arriving at our destination at the same time.
Because it was only 4 minutes a year we had each taken little notice of the trivial increase in the journey time, but the 30 minutes was now too large to ignore. There was nothing that either of us could do to reduce it, we each had discovered our shortest route, and the next-shortest alternate route, and so on, and could find no quicker way to commute than by using the steadily more clogged-up major trunk routes.
What puzzled me for a while was that there seemed to be no correlation between the increasae in journey time and the miles travelled. My increase was still 4 minutes a year, even though I travelled a much greater distance than he did. I can only assume that the delays occur in the more densely populated portions of Berkshire, so that my Wilts and Hants portions of the trip had almost no increase at all, and all of the problems occurred in the final third of my trip.
I used to work using phone lines and modems, making site visits only if I had to install software or run tests. I took part in tele-conferences, net-meetings, and e-mail discussions rather than pile into a crowded meeting room miles from where I lived.
And what was I doing? Helping develop the network of fibre-links, switches, power supplies and all the infrastructure that has helped to give us Broadband today. When we were working to install and troubleshoot our systems, we felt sure that what we were doing would help the human race, improve their quality of life, remove the need to travel in the rat-race of commuting for thousands of people.
Isn't it ironic that, although my efforts might indeed have allowed many people to work from home, I am not one of them?
When we compared travel times, we realised that there was a remarkable similarity between our experiences. Over the 8 or so years we had known each other, the journey time for each of us had increased by 30 minutes. Each successive year we had begun to get up a little bit earlier and get in the car, to continue arriving at our destination at the same time.
Because it was only 4 minutes a year we had each taken little notice of the trivial increase in the journey time, but the 30 minutes was now too large to ignore. There was nothing that either of us could do to reduce it, we each had discovered our shortest route, and the next-shortest alternate route, and so on, and could find no quicker way to commute than by using the steadily more clogged-up major trunk routes.
What puzzled me for a while was that there seemed to be no correlation between the increasae in journey time and the miles travelled. My increase was still 4 minutes a year, even though I travelled a much greater distance than he did. I can only assume that the delays occur in the more densely populated portions of Berkshire, so that my Wilts and Hants portions of the trip had almost no increase at all, and all of the problems occurred in the final third of my trip.
I used to work using phone lines and modems, making site visits only if I had to install software or run tests. I took part in tele-conferences, net-meetings, and e-mail discussions rather than pile into a crowded meeting room miles from where I lived.
And what was I doing? Helping develop the network of fibre-links, switches, power supplies and all the infrastructure that has helped to give us Broadband today. When we were working to install and troubleshoot our systems, we felt sure that what we were doing would help the human race, improve their quality of life, remove the need to travel in the rat-race of commuting for thousands of people.
Isn't it ironic that, although my efforts might indeed have allowed many people to work from home, I am not one of them?
posted by Sopwith-Camel | 12:53 pm
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