1974
By Joe Rossignol
The year is 1974. Richard Nixon is President. Steve Jobs is on a quest for spiritual enlightenment in India, two years before co-founding Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak in his Los Gatos garage. Also during that time, science fiction author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke accurately predicted the Internet and personal computer as we know it today.
In a taped interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Clarke claimed that households would have a small console-based computer that would allow an individual to search for information that he or she needs. The renowned writer followed up on his prediction by stating that computers will enrich society by allowing life to be lived without borders.
“They will make it possible to live really anywhere we like. Any businessman or executive could live almost anywhere on Earth and still do his business through a device like this,” he said. “And this is a wonderful thing. It means we won’t have to be stuck in cities. We can live out in the country or wherever we please, and still carry on complete interaction with human beings as well as with other computers.”
Almost forty years later, what Clarke said couldn’t be any more true.
In addition to being a nineteen-year-old college student, I am responsible for managing a large iPhone, iPad and iPod touch online community that has close to 200,000 registered members. While this might be a time-consuming task, I am able to carry out my day-to-day responsibilities from the comfort of my bedroom, which I like to think of as my personal office space.
It takes a lot of mental discipline to work from home, and it’s something that I continually encourage myself to improve on. Avoiding procrastination as much as possible is key, which involves phasing out the numerous distractions that exist when your house doubles as your workspace. Not that I would be against working in corporate office environment in a city such as San Francisco or New York City, but managing myself and having the peace and quiet of working alone is something that I have grown accustomed to.
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