Telecommuting Eases NYC Transit Strike Pain

UPDATED: New Yorkers have come a long way since the last transit strike 25 years ago.

In that relatively short timeframe, the city has grown from business capital of the developed world into a true center of global commerce, with untold trillions of dollars in transactions whipping through an unseen network each day.

Today, unlike 1980, much of that business can be done with the sweep of a wireless mouse or the push of a remote button. From Tokyo’s Nikkei, to London’s Footsie, to Wall Street’s NASDAQ, commerce can as easily be conducted from your kitchen as in your office.

And although New Yorkers certainly have come a long way, the biggest change, perhaps, is they no long have to go a long way.

Telecommuting wasn’t exactly a household word back in 1980. And if you wanted to get a job done, it meant being at your desk to shuffle through papers that needed to be signed in triplicate by supervisors before being stacked away in those ubiquitous metal filing cabinets that used to line office walls.

But telecommuting is likely easing the pain that the Transport Workers Union’s strike has brought business.

Much of the internetnews.com team has been forced today to work remotely. From Brooklyn to the west side of the city, and like most other days spread out all over the country, the nations Internet infrastructure allows the publication to continue conducting business even when staffers are too far away to make it the brick-and-mortar office.

Most employees of Jupitermedia, internetnews.com’s parent company, have remote access to internal networks, databases, files and e-mail.