The promise of telecommuting virtually here.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff

Beginning about 20 years ago, I remember hearing a lot about "telecommuting"--modern technology allowing people to eschew the office and work from home or wherever--and it was going to be the next big thing for business.

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Of course, the technology we were talking about at the time was fax machines and drastically reduced-price long-distance telephones.

There was talk that telecommuting would ease congestion on the roads, allow for working parents to more easily tend to their children, and perhaps even save companies money by lessening the need for office space and its accoutrements. We journalists diligently prepared articles about it, interviewing pioneering telecommuters, talking with traffic engineers, canvassing child-care experts, and surveying commercial real estate brokers. Pretty much all of them predicted a significant impact.

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Like almost anything labeled the "next big thing," it was all sound and fury, signifying nothing. And since I wrote some of those pieces, I suppose you may argue it was a tale told by an idiot.

Telecommuting wasn't embraced by anyone other than zealots back then for a variety of reasons. First, the technology wasn't there to support it. But the biggest reason was that people didn't like it. In some cases, the telecommuters were looked down upon as slackers--or worse, mothers--and the whole idea got the image of being a career-killer. And overall, telecommuters reported that they missed the office, the camaraderie of fellow workers, the give-and-take, and besides, being home all the time gave them cabin fever.

Fast-forward to today, and things are different. Very different.

I was having a conversation with a businessman in New York the other day, and he was kvetching about finding someone to take a very good job with relatively high pay. He was interviewing mostly young people, say those 25 to 35, and he noted that hardly any of them asked about the job itself--what are my duties, that sort of thing--but rather asked immediately about flex-time and working a significant portion of their time from home, or at least not in the office.

"They don't want to talk to people or travel or spend any time in meetings," he said. "They just wanted to sit and work at their computers."

Sitting and working at a computer no longer means being tied to a...