Perhaps another nail in the coffin of internet technology as a force of change in the way we live and work forever was produced by the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) last Friday in its report into the phenomenon of teleworking.
Teleworking was going to be the next great thing, altering the shape of our working lives by allowing us to log on to the office from the comfort of our kitchen table. A couple of years ago you couldn't switch on the TV without hearing that you'd soon be exchanging the daily grind of commuter hell for a more utopian lifestyle of cyber-commuting.
In fact, some reporters told us breathlessly, office blocks might soon be a thing of the past. However, the TUC report found that home computers were more likely to be used by stressed out executives trying to keep up with the demands of the office and bringing home work at the weekends than anyone who's switched over to using their home as their primary work base.
So instead of getting up in the morning and dialling up the office while eating your toast and wandering around in your pyjamas, you come home at the weekend and immediately continue hammering away at your own PC so that you'll manage to meet whatever insane deadline your company has given you.
Why am I not surprised? All technology has ever done for us is to make it ever more impossible to be completely out of touch. Computers have made things so much easier (yeah, right) that we can get twice as much done in half the time, thus providing the increases in productivity so beloved of economists everywhere.
The thing about working in an office is that, for all that having to drag yourself out of bed at some unearthly hour of the morning and launching yourself into the maelstrom of commuter traffic is a complete pain in the neck, at least you can happily complain to your co-workers about it for a good 15 minutes while having your first cup of coffee.
Working in a real-time office instead of a virtual one does at least provide welcome distraction by way of the various little dramas that play out in front of you every day - from the lack of political correctness evidenced by some bloke complimenting you on your latest-fashion skirt to the hysteria caused when the MD has shown a vast array of computer skills by managing to crash the computer and lose an entire day's work in the blink of an eye.
Clearly there are benefits to teleworking - I'm a kind of teleworker myself, since much of what I write is e-mailed to the various places it needs to reach. And (I'm asked this a lot so there's no doubting my answer here) I absolutely do not and never will miss commuting into work in the mornings!
But when you're feeling out of sorts and unmotivated, there's nothing better than a bit of a moan with your work colleagues to get you up and running again. Moaning alone at your computer screen doesn't have quite the same effect.
Equally, when the technology fails you and you've managed to lose a couple of hours' work, you can blame somebody else when you're in an office. At home, it's just you.
(Actually it's probably not your fault that the computer crashed. If you ever check out the relevant websites, you'll find that they're packed with information on bugs in various popular programmes that cause them to go crazy without any input from you whatsoever. I can't begin to imagine the number of working hours wasted simply because the damned software can't get its head round what it's supposed to be doing.)
To be honest, home working suits me, since I like doing things my own way and can be very grumpy when others disagree. And I'm reasonably happy with my own company, which is probably very important to a home worker. But for most of us it's the fact that we're out and about meeting other people that makes work bearable in the first place. People like interacting, which is why teleworking will always be a minority way of going about things no matter what the experts tell us.
I'm sure that computer companies will continue to extol the potential virtues of teleworking, if only to keep their sales up. Unfortunately for them the most recent research shows that shipments of PCs into Europe have suffered their first decline in 20 years. Deliveries are down 4 per cent in the second quarter of 2001 compared with 2000 and 18 per cent compared with quarter one.
Additionally, the average price of PCs has fallen sharply, by around 8 per cent. Of course, the hype about the viruses your home computer can pick up doesn't help either. I thought I was looking at a straight-to-video movie when I heard the FBI warning about the Code Red worm last week. Since it affected internet sites and not actual computers it made no difference to those of us at home but it made another "internet about to collapse" news story if nothing else.
Of course, happy owners of Macs rarely need to worry about viruses since most of them attack Windows operating systems rather than Apple's. (Strange for a worm, don't you think!) Still, whether it's Macs or Windows, the idea of your computer being gobbled up by something over which you've no control is a chilling one.
I remember my first week at home when my computer went on the blink and I thought the world had come to an end. In fact it was because a CD had got jammed and the manual didn't tell me how to get it out. (A paperclip, that great technological standby, was the answer).
It seems that many of us use our home PCs as an extension of our workplace rather than a replacement for it. If that allows employers to show employees a greater degree of flexibility in the hours they spend in the office itself then we've progressed. If it means that we're simply working more hours in two different locations, then technology is doing us a great disservice.
It's all about getting the balance right. But of course when do we ever manage that?
