https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/11/out-of-office-has-the-homeworking-revolution-finally-arrived

With no commuting or pesky colleagues, working from home should be idyllic. So why are so many of us desperate to get back to our desks, asks Joe Moran

Ever since the arrival of broadband in the early 2000s, people have been predicting a revolution in homeworking. The revolution always felt oversold to me, too dismissive of our attachment to what cyberpunk writers and techno-utopians call “meatspace”. The number of homeworkers did rise, but they still had to endure tedious jokes about watching daytime TV and working in their pyjamas. Most people carried on going into work.

Then, in March, the future arrived with a bump, but in a very uneven way. Many workers still had to turn up for their essential and now hazardous jobs; others were furloughed or laid off. The rest of us had to tutor ourselves in video conferencing and data-sharing platforms. We got used to encountering our colleagues as rows and columns of heads and shoulders, like a very subdued game of Celebrity Squares with someone taking minutes. Meanwhile, ghostly reminders popped up on our email calendars, alerting us to work events arranged before lockdown. Somewhere in a parallel, pandemic-free universe, these events were being diligently attended by our alternative selves, people who had never heard of Zoom nor received an email telling them to “stay safe”.