WFH: Ground Control to Major Tom
"This is Major Tom to Ground Control.
I am stepping through the door
And I'm floating in a most peculiar way,
Can I please get back inside? If I may...."
David Bowie, Space Oddity, 1972
The "outside" is a little eerie from time to time, beyond the escape hatch, where unbidden dangers lurk, but the well-secured masks seal the peril. Within the capsule, it offers some local control, one can adjust the dials oneself, you know now, most times.
it is easier to adjust the air control, temperature, food cycles and working hours, especially when rotating time-wise the other side of the planet below - and Ground Control is out of audio or communications reach on the dark side.
Ground Control (corporate) lacks the floating space ship's inherent flexibility, as it operates its comms channels through a "global desktop" trunk line, an earth-bound system designed to protect the NASA home time in the local HQs, and its staff are dispersed all over now, but they like using it. In hyperspace, accessing their technology is not quick; we do it, even if it is very, very slow. The cursor jiggles out here in space, just catching up with a few seconds delay, there are so many servers to poke through back to the planet.
Foot-long chopsticks
Major Tom thinks their tech is like eating Chinese food with foot-long chop sticks. Editing words is a very slow process and powerpoint amends awkward and in spurts too. It is forbidden to do this outside the integrated Global Desktop environment.
Once a day, the space ship flies over the City of London. It looks to Major Tom so odd at a distance - and it took various earth cycles to realise it is because it is empty. He photographs "below" to remind Ground Control what it looks like, With no air pollution below, the images are quite crisp and clear.
Bandwidth is patchy
Early morning the comms bandwidth, whatever the frequency, is patchy. The telecoms structure struggles to pipe data in and out of Ground Control through small town cables to the overstretched Home Counties and Scottish shires. Ground Contro l sends regular messages, duties to complete nearly overdue courses on Money Laundering, virtue signals of tribal fellowship and corporate supremacy on the intranet to inspire morale.
The virus is not in the spaceship. Obviously Major Tom sweeps regularly for aliens.
"Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong."
The spaceship knows which way to go.
Have a good WFH week end!
My thanks for the inspiration to my friend and once tenant Reeves Gabrels, David Bowie's former lead guitarist.
15 May 2020