Remote Work’s Ancient History
We have this idea that remote work is new. It is thousands of years old. While the tools today may be different, the practice is ancient.
Inthe cool of the Egyptian desert morning, before the unbearable heat of the day would blast down, a camel’s shadow shrouded the cave of Saint Anthony bringing a reed scroll. It had been sent by the desert mother, Great Amma Syncletica the day before. They were sharing some ideas. Collaborating. They were the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 3rd century CE.
Today, that message might be an email or a Slack post. I doubt though, that emojis were used. They were also remote working.
Similar stories played out with the hermits of Ireland centuries later. Or even today with the Hindu Kumbh. Their cells carved into cliff faces or adapted natural caves or built from rough stone were the first remote offices. The biggest downside probably being no coffee services.
While we may think that remote work is something new and novel to the digital age, it is not. In fact, we may be looking at remote work in entirely the wrong way. For today, remote work is often seen through the lens of scientific management, Taylorism, measure by keystrokes and outputs, pomodoro techniques and other largely pointless hacks.
How might we learn from ancient history to change our perspective on remote work as being meaningful and more valuable beyond harsh factory-like metrics?
Those ancient desert dwellers had developed sophisticated systems and networks, a form of social solidarity, yet based on physical separation. Rulers and leading thinkers would travel many miles to seek their wisdom whereas today we send an invite to a video meeting. Instead of a human scribe to record the meeting however, we use an AI agent.
As we move forward through history, we might consider the rise of the telegraph and Sarah Bagley in the late 1850’s, the Victorian Era, tapping out messages on her telegraph during the day. But at night it was a whole different story. She was part of what author Thomas Standage calls “the Victorian Internet”.
It was a vast network of telegraph operators around the world who in their off hours would exchange jokes, stories and poetry. Much like the early days of bulletin boards, then later faxes and email and today, Slack or Teams messages.
Medieval scriptoria’s in monasteries give us another parallel. These were the monks working in, essentially, co-working spaces. They were knowledge workers creating vast volumes of religious and theological texts. Their productivity systems would look very similar to today’s productivity hack gurus.
Today’s obsession with “productivity hacks” and “productivity systems” along with “deep work” has historical precedent in the ancient monastic rules like those of the Rule of Saint Benedict that structured time for “deep work” and community interaction (poor sods didn’t have coffee rooms back then.)
In the Renaissance era there was the “studolio” which were private rooms for scholars and thinkers. Essentially the first “home offices”, replete with the most modern of communications and information technologies; books, paper, ink and such.
In the time of the Silk Road the Persians had caravanserias, or what we might today call digital hubs, which were temporary workspaces for traders. They could exchange gossip, access certain resources (coffee?) and conduct business along the way. Kind of how remote and nomadic workers today might meet at a hipster coffee shop.
Throughout history, these workers created their own languages, terminologies and ways of working, rituals for meetings and means of knowledge transfer. Our tools of knowledge and information creation may well have become very different, but our way of being human in the way that work hasn’t changed much. Remote work has been a part of human societies for many thousands of years, across many cultures.
There has been this idea of recent that meaningful work can only happen in one space. Whether that’s in a sea of beige cubicles with monochromatic furniture with bright lunch room seats or on the floor of a brutalist factory line.
But the modern concept of “deep work” bears a striking similarity to those monastic practices of contemplative labour, or the deep thinking of the cave dwellers of ancient Egypt and Irish hermit priests. They had rituals and despite being remote, had ways of connecting and at times, coming together, like the Kumbh Mela for Hindus.
So perhaps, rather than seeing remote work as just a plodding and dismal checklist of tasks and mundane drudgery, we might see it in a different light. One where we see work in a more meaningful, creative way that inspires and feels more real. That allows for contemplation. Where through digital channels, like those of the telegraphists, we create a form of sub-culture that connects us and where, at times, we can come together in physical spaces to reinforce those human bonds we all seek and desire.
Remote work isn’t just about replicating office processes, ticking off checklists, sitting through pointless video meetings and finding workarounds to dullness, but seeing work in new ways and for management to understand that Taylorism in the digital age just doesn’t work like it did in the 19th century.
When we do, then management too will see the uselessness and pointlessness of applying the metrics they do to gauge productivity. Sometimes, to look forwards, we must look backwards. To realise that it is not technologies that matter, for they are simply tools, as useful as they can be, but it is humans that make the difference. Even with Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps more so.