Wired & unemployed

Well, Seattle has made the big time. If you count being named Forbes’s “America’s Most Wired” city the big time.

Seems it’s not high-tech employers so much as it’s Wi-Fi hot spots that gave us the leg up. Well, I guess so. Aside from Starbuck’s, which of course charges for connectivity, most coffee shops give it to you for free. I happen to like Tully’s, because it’s not the monolith that ’Buck’s is, & because their coffee actually tastes, you know, better.

& they tell me that Microsoft’s commuter buses are equipped with Wi-Fi, so that you shouldn’t lose a moment of work time while going to & from your actual job.

But what gets me is that pretty much any hair salon with pretensions of up-marketdom also has Wi-Fi. Why would you want to be answering emails or creating presentations when you could be parked in a high-tech chair, espresso to hand & reading all those magazines you wouldn’t ever think of buying?

There’s something decidedly whacked about this insidious always-on concept. I can see why Forbes would honor it, though—another way for corporations to suck extra hours of servitude out of their staff.

Interesting, though; at the bottom of that Forbes page there’s a link to the weekly report on layoffs. I guess they don’t see the irony in that juxtaposition.