ROBIN HANSON: Remote Work Specializes. “We seem on track to spend far more preventing pandemic health harm than we will suffer from it, which seems too much spending given the apparent low elasticity of harm w.r.t. prevention. But an upside is that some of this prevention effort is being invested in remote work, which is helping to develop and innovate such capacities. Which matters because remote work (a.k.a. telecommuting) is my guess for the most important neglected trend over the next 30 years.”

Some related thoughts of mine from 2005. “As an added bonus, to the extent that more people work at home instead of in crowded office buildings, there’s also a homeland-security and public-health benefit: There would be fewer dense targets for terrorism, and probably fewer opportunities for people to spread, and catch, infectious bugs ranging from the common cold to avian flu.”