My Futuristic Job

I feel I should apologise for not having written much recently. Astoundingly, this site doesn’t actually make me millions yet so I have to work in TV to pay my rent. I’m currently doing my third of six 12-hour nightshifts, which quite frankly sucks as I’d rather be on my couch.  I frequently dream of a future where I can work from home but, with my job, that dream seems fairly remote.

It gives me time to daydream however, and wonder what the future of work will be like. In the immediate future, it seems like everyone is very keen on having us all telecommute. Governments and offices are claiming that this will help us enhance our ‘work-life’ ratio and will help the environment as we won’t be piling into cars every day. This is all true and good and hooray for us. It will also save companies a fortune in office space, infrastructure, post-it notes and so on. The government will be happy as we aren’t annoyingly trying to travel all over the place, demanding decent roads and transport and occasional ambulances. This is especially true in London (and other Capital cities) as transport systems struggle every rush hour and seem on the verge of collapse. This is just going to get worse as people keep insisting on having work and producing babies. In fact, I suspect the government would love it if we all just stayed at home and never left at all.

Eventually we will have fully immersive Virtual Reality, so you will be able to virtually sit behind a virtual desk. If you want, you could even virtually commute and get stuck in virtual traffic. That sounds mental but people seemed up for it in Grand Theft Auto 4, so it could be possible.

So everyone is a massive couch-bound winner! Except of course for a few jobs like plumbers and doctors and policemen and, (like me) transmission controllers. Eventually we will obviously be replaced by robots (or cyborgs for police if Robocop taught us anything) but until then we will have to go out to work like suckers.

Now the ironic thing with my job is that while society will be progessing toward the glorious ideal of working in their pants from home, I will have to get up, go to the tube and eventually get to my work desk. Like someone from the recent past. (Or yore as the past is technically known.) BUT, when I get there, my desk is one of the most advanced looking workstations going. Even NASA control looks pretty shabby. Here it is:

Looks pretty cool doesn’t it? If I was a kid with a time travel device and saw what I was going to do in the future – watch TV for 12 hours in a room full of screens – I would think it was cool. Sadly, I am a bit bored of it now and dream of working from home.

Once I am a millionaire and have my huge house and control most of the world, that is what I will do. Then I can sit in a chair and watch the world and hatch devious plans. In fact I will probably end up like Ozymandias in the awesome Watchmen comic / movie. I dream of this:

Look at my work, ye mighty, and despair!