The printing press changed the world in the 13th century by spreading the word, but the telephone was the first technology that made working together at a distance possible in real time. Telegraph and semaphore flags, you might argue, made that possible too; but you’ll have to admit the bandwidth was pretty low. The bits per second transmitted were just that, bits per second; but it wasn’t long until engineers figured out how to send thousands of bits for sounds and then millions for pictures.

In 1831 Michael Faraday proved that vibrations of metal could be converted to electrical impulses, but it was forty-five years before Alexander Graham Bell applied the discovery and was issued a patent for the telephone. The following year he formed the Bell Telephone Company, and installed the first city exchange in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1878 the world’s first telephone directory was published, no mammoth tome suitable for use as a kid’s booster chair, it was a single sheet of only fifty names (numbers weren’t used yet). That year President Hayes installed the first telephone in the White House. The first outgoing call went to Alexander Graham Bell himself, who had to be told to speak more slowly. It was six years, 1883, before you could talk to someone in another city—The Big Apple and Bean Town were the first to be connected.

In 1912 the Navy experimented with air to ground radio using Morse code. In 1921 the Detroit Police Department, began experimentation with one-way mobile voice service, so-called radio-telephone communication, and in 1933 the Bayonne, NJ Police Department made it possible to call “Car 54 where are you?” and expect an answer over the first two-way system. In 1946 a driver in St. Louis, Mo., placed the first mobile telephone call, and within two years wireless telephone service was available (at a high price) in almost 100 cities and highway corridors.

An engineer by the name of Ring (yes, really) at Bell Labs dreamed up the idea for cell phones, but in 1947 the technology to do it didn’t exist. In fact, it wasn’t until 1973, when Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first cellphone call—to his rival Joe Engel of AT&T Bell Labs—using a phone about the size and weight of a brick. Ten years later the first commercial cellular service was launched ushering in the era of “can you hear me now?”

Bell Lab’s PicturePhone was test marketed in the early 60’s, a big hit at the Seattle World’s Fair, and commercial service debuted in Pittsburgh in 1970; but it was a resounding flop because of steep price and poor picture quality. Still, it did presage the day when you could visually bring people together.

High-end teleconference centers were built, and executives across the country and around the world could meet eye-to-eye, if not face-to-face. If wasn’t long until web-based conferencing systems allowed one-to-many presentations, albeit without any facility for interaction and exchange.

Other systems designed to allow collaboration came along, but were often hard to use because they weren’t intuitive—designed for geeks by geeks—and in many cases they were more limited than the technology they tried to replicate. Online whiteboards, for example, cost tens of thousands of dollars, but had all of the limitations of real whiteboards and none of the advantages that could have been added such as highlighting, or presentation and mark-up of existing content.

Meanwhile, computers and networks were evolving from centralized systems with dedicated terminals to distributed networks of personal computers. Mobile workers, otherwise know as road warriors, with laptop computers began to make hotel reservations based on the availability of internet access. Marriott responded to the demand and now has over 100,000 wired rooms. Even airlines are investigating airborne internet access, with Luftansa and American leading they way.

One reason telework is coming into its own, is that all this and more is now available at affordable prices, and even free. Today Apple ships their Macintosh® computers with built in webcams and free iChat software, for example, so people can videoconference while sharing photos, documents and presentations. Google, some believe, is preparing to blanket the U.S. with free Wi-Fi to make access to their click-though ads more ubiquitous.

When sharing information from anywhere is as easy as meeting face-to-face telework will become the standard way of working

A halfway house for telecommuters, a distributed workplace alternative, has been proposed by Michael Shear. The idea is shared satellite office space with full technology infrastructure and tech support for road-warriors, freelancers, and corporate telecommuters.

I don’t disagree with the usefulness of central facilities, after all, freelances and road-warriors are creating their own ad-hoc places to gather already in basements and coffee-shops. But it’s not clear to me why what he’s proposing is any better than any other satellite office, except that they’re a shared facility and they’re planning to put them outside the ring of fire. I’d be interested in what you think.

It seems to me the shortcomings of home-based offices can be overcome, and the advantages maintained, with creative approaches. Both employees and employers are embracing the idea. Eighty-four of the Fortune 100 Best Companies To Work For 2008 allow employees to telecommute or work at home at least 20% of the time. These 10 have the highest percentage of telecommuters:

Cisco Systems 70%
eBay 48%
Booz Allen Hamilton 34%
S.C. Johnson & Son 32%
American Fidelity Assurance 30%
Shared Technologies 26%
Principal Financial Group 23%
Goldman Sachs 22%
Yahoo 20%
Qualcomm 18%

And some companies have used the telecommuting model from their inception. The ±265 people who answer the phones for JetBlue Airlines work from home in locations all over the country, and they have from day one. Interestingly, they have the lowest turnover of any “call center” in the country. They did have a problem with one operator, and almost had to let her go because her cow lowing cracked up callers and slowed down the call handling rate. But they mooved the cow’s pen, and solved the problem.

And there’s mySQL, the venture-funded company that’s behind one of the world’s most popular open source databases. Six million users, and forty thousand downloads a day. The three founders were in Finland, UK, and US. First 10 employees were in 7 countries. Today, ten years later, they have employees in 26 countries and on every continent except Antarctica.

Tom Friedman hit the nail on the head, seems to me, when he wrote about a coming shift to a medieval guild-like relationship among workers. Problem is, people already are working without anything like the guild’s organizational support. More than tech support and bigger data pipes, they need the mentoring that master craftsman offered, the quality control and insurance and retirement and legal and collective bargaining power they provided.

Seems to me social developments always lag technology. That’s the catalyst for change that we need. Managers that cling to a sweatshop mentality need educational intervention. Employees that feel isolated need virtual groups to join, such as the companies that go to Second Life for concerts and webinars, and company teams that play World of Warcraft together.

Technology is the enabler, no doubt about it. And we’re woefully behind the curve when it comes to implementing broadband and public wifi. But that’s a social and political issue, too, not a technological,one.

Japan has gigabit consumer broadband—that’s 1000 megabits per seconds folks. How come we don’t? Aside from the fact that phone and cable4 companies seem to have the FCC in their pocket, that is.

People are quitting their jobs because they can’t afford the commute. Is that a matter of cutting off your nose to spite your face? Not really when the sad fact is that going to work can actually cost almost as much—or more than—you make. Public transportation is sometimes an option, but . . . .

And get this, while public transportation usage is up, some systems are cutting capacity because they can’t afford the energy costs.

Putting together a gigabit wireless network would be a lot cheaper than building and maintaining a light-rail system and feeder buslines. But everyone seems to be in denial. Instead of attacking the real problems of crumbling and insufficient infrastructure, and industrial-era management techniques, instead of looking at real solutions, people focus on feel-good programs, phony issues and concerns.

We still focus on roads and bridges to make captialism flow when there’s just as dire a need to build a modern network infrastructure, and create technology jobs to build new layers on that infrastructure. We don’t need 1950s solutions for catalyzing the economy, we need a forward looking strategy that will make sure we’re players as China blossoms (or is it mushrooms?). But even when it comes to roads we’re woefully behind. China plans to build 53,000 miles of new highway in the first two decades of this century compared to just 1,130 new interstate miles here.

The problem is you can’t plan strategies if you don’t take into account reduced revenues due to job erosion and increased fuel costs—and do something about it.

Can you spell tipping point? We’re all going to be in hot water if we don’t start waking up to the fact that everything is moving fast, and we (individuals, companies, governments, and countries) have to run harder just to keep up, nevermind get ahead.

Yesterday the House approved telecommuting legislation that requires federal agencies to allow qualified workers to work from home at least 20 percent of the hours worked in a two-week period—that’s two work days or one day a week in most cases. The national average, by the way, is 2.3.

The idea is to give more federal workers the opportunity to telework and boost productivity by cutting down on commuting time, reducing absenteeism, allow for greater organizational flexibility, reduce traffic congestion and pollution, and offer relief from high gas prices.

To date, studies have cited such issues as management resistance, security concerns and technical problems for reason that have slowed adoption.

The Office of Personnel Management estimates 110,000 federal employees teleworked at least one day a month during 2006, down slightly from the year before. At the Labor Department, on the other hand, teleworking was up 58 percent because the agency integrated teleworking into its continuity of operations planning.

The good news, according to an AP story, “…the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 federal and D.C. government workers, said the legislation was a good first step in that it requires agencies to show that workers are ineligible for teleworking rather than the current system where workers are presumed ineligible unless the agency determines otherwise.”

The bad news is this bill and the Senate version don’t have any enforcement mechanisms for agencies that don’t meet teleworking requirements. But it’s another small step forward.