the death of distance?

O’Reilly Network: Where ever I lay my URL [May 20, 2003]
You see, I just realised that no one – at least no one who pays me a wage – has any real idea where I am. I’ve never met my editor here at O’Reilly, Simon St Laurent, but given that I’m English he could possibly guess to within a few hundred miles, and my boss at The Guardian could perhaps narrow it down to within 10, but at the end of the day, my address is my URL, my email and my Instant Messenger accounts.
[ . . . . ]
This whole idea fascinates me – perhaps, for the first time, after years of prophecy, we can now truly declare the death of distance.

To paraphrase Twain, the death of distance is still exaggerated. At the end of this article, James Fallows offers a bet on whether the virtual workplace will win out over the physical.

Any takers?

Obviously, for Ben Hammersley and others similarly situated, this will work: writers have always been mobile. But consider a hive of knowledge workers like Microsoft or Apple: you *will* work in Redmond or Cupertino, and that’s that.