Social and Economic Technology - 5.1. Social Impacts from a Sociological point of view.
Rural Village Life? What's that?
Many look upon villages life with the nostalgia of a by gone age. Certainly village identity, comradeship, and community spirit has suffered considerably over the past decades. Many blame technology for this. Such blame is quite illogical. Centralization is the principle culprit. Technology, correctly applied, could be the very medium required to counteract centralization and allow the benefits of old fashioned village life to return. How? Read on.
A village Centre, not home isolation
Many believe that working away from some centralized office means working at home, isolated, and deprived of any socialization at all. Under Secotek nothing would be further from the truth. For the majority the place of the work will be where it should be, in a village centre. It does not matter that they are not all working for the same employer. All the ingredients are there for social interaction between village workers, and the rest of what has been so lost in recent years should follow. Secotek also offers another advantage. Distance interaction with genuine co-workers will be so intense that actual presence will be felt. The village will be truly in touch with other communities. Understanding of communities beyond the village will be maintained, and the downside of village isolation will not be there. Secotek technology can true offer the best of all worlds from a rural social viewpoint!
The village centre to which villagers will travel to work will be called a Telecottage, and, whilst not compulsory by any means, will be an important part of Secotek technology. The concept of the telecottage has been around a fair while (www.tca.org.uk), but it has never been given a fair trial, because it has been let down by the available technology, and has to a great extent changed from the above concept.
Most families are not equipped to have people working at home. Not only are many homes too small, but there is a difficulty integrating work into the home environment, with domestic and business pressures clashing, particularly during the nominal "work" periods. There is a psychological need in a great number of us, to commute away from home to a place of work. The necessary "commute" is, however, measured in minute, not miles. It needs to be long enough that the mind registers "home has been left, work has begun", but no longer. The workplace would ideally be a "village centre" in close physical proximity to colleagues and social companions. Yet, in order to to promote village well being, these people should be fellow villagers, not necessarily people who happen to work for the same employer. Changing employer, (something which can happen quite frequently) should NOT wreck social life. All this indicates there needs to be a village centre to which people commute, meet together, but work for a variety of employers. This place is called a "Telecottage". The technology contained therein could equally well be distributed in homes, each person needing their own space. However, working atmosphere is important.
Nevertheless Secotek technology will fully home working, be it all or part of the the time. On easily affordable equipment within the home will be the same technical facilities as those available at the telecottage.
Potential workers in a sparsely populated rural areas will therefore be able to obtain and undergo employment as effectively as physically moving to a more densely populated area. Secotek is designed to minimize the effect of distance, to put a true "presence" amongst colleagues, and not resort to spoiling the rural environment with costly physical infrastructure. Despite this no real fundamental changes in working practices are called for.
Adjacent to the village "work telecottage", should be the village school. The school should have facilities for all ages and abilities, of children. Specialization and advanced subjects are dealt with by the technology. However, behavior, cultural, and pastoral issues should be dealt with locally by local villagers working as teachers. This is an ideal situation to promote local culture, village identity, and well being. It is hoped and anticipated the distinction between the school "Telecottage" and the work "Telecottage" would get fairly vague, with the pastoral side of a child's education being far more mixed age and adult inclusive rather than the "them and us" attitude found in schools today.
This is because the problems and solutions applied to the rural worker also apply to the education of school children, and they stand to socially benefit from the technology more than their parents by not being transported about so much in badly supervised and degrading buses. The rural children would still belong to a school, but the choice of school would be much wider, opening the possibility of attending a school aimed at their specialization. Their education structure will still be classroom orientated, with a choice, under the technology, of "chalk and talk" teaching, class discussion, and group discussion. An individual teacher will take classes, with the pupils interacting within the classroom atmosphere in a very similar way to the present classroom situation. This would compliment the facilities offered to the working adult, and enable rural families to stick together, and rural communities to be reborn as rural communities.
What impact would this have on rural economies?