During the darkest depths of the pandemic, as businesses laid off millions of people and refrigerator trucks idled outside hospitals, one segment of the workforce enjoyed a degree of freedom and autonomy not seen in at least a century. With offices closed, the “laptop class” of knowledge workers was forced—or freed—to phone it in from home. At first, we (I am a member of this tribe) languished, doom-scrolling Twitter and streaming episodes of Tiger King. But then a funny thing happened. Without a boss looming over our shoulders, we were given an unprecedented amount of control over our own schedules. Many of us avoided hours-long commutes, as well. And in that extra time, amid enormous suffering and upheaval, occurred a curious flourishing. We baked bread. We learned to knit. We video-chatted with friends we’d never have thought to reach out to in normal times. We tended our gardens, botanical and spiritual alike.
Working from home lifted burdens we didn’t know we carried. Implicit in office life is a degree of power and control—not only do the bosses buy our services, they also buy our physical presence. Decoupling those things unlocked liberty not seen in any office worker’s lifetime; managers were forced to communicate precisely what they wanted from their employees, rather than just keep them around for incidental productivity—or, as Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, put it, “spontaneous idea generation.”
The change in physical terrain—from a space controlled by the...
The Green Party has suspended a London council candidate who shared social media posts blaming Israel for the arson attacks on Jewish volunteer ambulances in March. A repost on the social media pr...