Jack (John) M Nilles coined the term ‘Telecommuting’ when describing the trade-offs between using the phone and commuting. After the first 20 years of his career coordinating interdisciplinary technology teams in the development of top-secret optical systems for satellites and NASA, and spurred by a Santa Barbara urban planner's challenge, ‘If you can put a man on the moon, why don’t you do something about traffic?’

As the University of Southern California's first director for Interdisciplinary Research, he assembled various disciplines to study and validate Jack’s hypothesis that technology enabled tasks to be done in new ways, starting with trading telecommunications for commuting.

The development of the Policy on the Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff, 1974 Final Report (and book in 1976), was based on work with an insurance company, who wanted to reduce their ridiculously high turnover. This research is the basis for over 50 years of work invested in advancing distributed work in a world where ‘technology was never the issue; there were always more people who could do it than managers who would allow them to.’

Please join me in welcoming Jack Nilles to Work 20XX.

I was thrilled beyond belief when Jack accepted my invitation. Ninety-one years young, still actively blogging and posting on the topic, what a treat to hear the story of how all this got started.

Jack Nilles: Telecommuting, Tradeoffs, Resistance, Incentives | Work 20XX podcast with Jeff Frick, Ep25

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