They could offer food and drink and a chance to mix electronically transmitted gossip with the face-to-face kind. “Meet me,” a stock suggestion might go, “at the munytel.”
Moreover, for telecommuters unable to handle their children and jobs simultaneously, the munytels might provide child care. And in poor neighborhoods, the munytels could combine work facilities with training.
The prefiasco Continental Illinois Bank in Chicago, despite its bad luck with “problem loans,” did some enlightened work in this field. It experimented with a word-processing center twenty-five miles away at a community college. The bank used it for both training and actual bank work, a logical combination; the students have learned on equipment similar to what they would use on the job, not simply the obsolete machinery that many schools must skimp along with. Corporations, encouraged by tax breaks or government subsidies, might together establish munytels in poorer neighborhoods[neighborhoods].[[70]] They would provide the businesslike surroundings that some workers might prefer over home offices in slums or public housing projects.
Munytels would be one response to some thoughtful criticisms of telecommuting made by Janice C. Blood, 9 to 5’s information director.
“If you’re a secretary earning $11,000 a year,” she says, “will your employer build you an addition for your computer room? Even a small Apple wouldn’t be too attractive an addition to my living room.”
Blood is also worried about the cost of the equipment itself, asking, “Should someone get a cut in salary just because her boss gets [her] a new typewriter?”
More likely, however, clerical workers instead would receive some more money for turning out a lot more work. Whatever the case, munytels could be a solution to the equipment issue—in addition to the obvious one of company-supplied computers in various cases.
But workers should still be free to use their own terminals. Remember Hollis Vail’s preference for his printer?
He’s right. I could never stomach working all day on, say, one of the older Apple IIs, which some companies may still use as their universal microcomputer. My Kaypro’s keyboard has a silkier feel. The screen is more viewable than many Apple monitors, and I’m a confirmed WordStar addict. Even if voice commands become the norm, I may well be among the last of the keyboard diehards. And yet, were I telecommuting, it wouldn’t matter. A corporate computer would care about the right series and speeds of bytes, not how they originated. So I might be able to keep using my electronic equivalent of a buggy whip.
Just about anybody, moreover, will be able to afford a useful small computer before the end of the century—because sooner or later one will be cheaper than today’s typical TV sets. Flat screens and keyboards will sell for a pittance as mass production and robotics drive down costs. So much for that one of Blood’s arguments.