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Lift07 and why we don't go naked when we work
Submitted by Ellen Wallace on February 12, 2007 - 14:55.
(First: some people do work naked, but they are a minority.)
More thoughts on clothes and the workplace
A phrase that ran around the Lift07 conference in Geneva last week was "first life, second life." The first is the one you think you live, where you can pinch yourself, and the other is your digital life - the time you spend online, on your cell phone and so on.
One of the problems with second lives is that we sit too much. I write this as I kneel on my ergonomic stool: I can't bear to sit all day. Presenter Julian Bleecher from the University of Southern California, who talked about living in a pervasively networked world, says he works standing up. Ideally, we should all be moving.
One reason people often say they want to work at home is to have the freedom to move around more - walk the dog or lift weights between critical tasks and no one is the wiser. We get to wear comfortable clothes.
I think this is one of the great illusions of self-employment or letting people work from home, which the second life world lets us do. Most of us who don't have to wear tidy suits to the office every day veer rapidly towards lumpiness as we type non-stop out of fear of being left behind. We wear comfortable clothes not because we can but because they are the only ones that still fit.
Barbara Holland, in Endangered Pleasures, wrote, "Some people find it hard to take anything seriously in the nude and besides, the chair sticks to the flesh. For optimum mental health, some daytime clothing is recommended. Spending a day in pajamas can feel deliciously indolent, spending a month in them gets depressing. We feel unnecessary, since whoever heard of being necessary in pajamas?" You should read what she has to say on going barefoot, aaah.
Maybe Second Life needs a dress code.
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(First: some people do work naked, but they are a minority.)
More thoughts on clothes and the workplace
A phrase that ran around the Lift07 conference in Geneva last week was "first life, second life." The first is the one you think you live, where you can pinch yourself, and the other is your digital life - the time you spend online, on your cell phone and so on.
One of the problems with second lives is that we sit too much. I write this as I kneel on my ergonomic stool: I can't bear to sit all day. Presenter Julian Bleecher from the University of Southern California, who talked about living in a pervasively networked world, says he works standing up. Ideally, we should all be moving.
One reason people often say they want to work at home is to have the freedom to move around more - walk the dog or lift weights between critical tasks and no one is the wiser. We get to wear comfortable clothes.
I think this is one of the great illusions of self-employment or letting people work from home, which the second life world lets us do. Most of us who don't have to wear tidy suits to the office every day veer rapidly towards lumpiness as we type non-stop out of fear of being left behind. We wear comfortable clothes not because we can but because they are the only ones that still fit.
Barbara Holland, in Endangered Pleasures, wrote, "Some people find it hard to take anything seriously in the nude and besides, the chair sticks to the flesh. For optimum mental health, some daytime clothing is recommended. Spending a day in pajamas can feel deliciously indolent, spending a month in them gets depressing. We feel unnecessary, since whoever heard of being necessary in pajamas?" You should read what she has to say on going barefoot, aaah.
Maybe Second Life needs a dress code.
Technorati Tags: geneva, GenevaLunch, lift, lift07