Pluggies: The Closet Culture Comes of Age
Bergheim, Laura
More insidiously than any other decade in our history, the 1980s have delivered unto us (and into our homes) the promises of past futurists: sit back, relax, and let your fingers do the walking...
...To work off that rich meal, compact home exercise machines and videos (booming since Jane Fonda kicked off the aerobic tape mania in the early eighties) keep Pluggies from looking like piggies...
...New breeds of furniture and machinery began appearing in spare bedrooms and alcoves...
...the extenders were stuffed with extension cords...
...Although the Pluggie character is still fermenting, the modus operandi for a society of selectively self-sufficient shut-ins is already in place...
...Unions, primarily white-collar ones, will undergo a dramatic change as at-home employment increases...
...Unions have long fought against the concept of piecework—that is, paying employees by the piece (for instance, a nickel per shirt-sleeve sewn) rather than by the hour...
...The LINK survey also queried participants on their reasons for working at home: Of those who were self-employed, the largest group (24 percent) said they had set up their offices at home to start their own businesses, while nearly half of those who chose to work at home for other companies said they had done so because the home was a more productive environment...
...Databases systems like DIALOG and ComWINTER • 1990 • 37 Culture in an Age of Money puServe provide a central point of access to hundreds of information sources around the country...
...Television has been born again through television preachers, teachers, endless cable channels, and do-it-yourself satellite dishes...
...it also functions tightly and efficiently...
...With it, users can order in groceries, read horoscopes, and exchange electronic mail with Gene Siskel, Howard Cosell, and Sylvia Porter (all of whom have columns on the network...
...Pluggies can wrap up their wire web and take it on planes, trains, and gondolas from Venice to Disneyland, at the same time finding shelter within the invisible, humming home of electricity that serves to distance them from the WINTER • 1990 • 39 Culture In an Ago of Money rigors of human relations...
...The greatest indicator of the new closet culture is the rapid change in the role of white-collar workers and their workplace environment...
...Although on the surface this may sound as though it defeats the stay-at-home purpose of the closet culture, mobile technology actually promises to change the concept of home as society has defined it...
...The at-home office is an established fact of life for many workers, but a new twist is swiftly being added...
...To Pluggies the home is primarily one big enclosed electrical outlet...
...The portrait of the happy new family at home is now complete with Dad on the word processor, Mom at the food processor, and the kids glued to their joysticks...
...The result is a technology that has actually helped turn the clock back by a century or so...
...By literally pulling the plug, Pluggies can use their gadgets to shield themselves from even the most impersonal of human contacts...
...For millions, and particularly for the `people of the future,' home is where you find it," wrote sociologist Alvin Toffler in his 1970 bestseller, Future Shock...
...Even when Pluggies interact meaningfully with those on the outside, it's often through a technological middleman: lonely Pluggies meet, make love, even marry each other via video 36 • DISSENT Mum in an Age of Mona dating, phone chat lines, and computer message boards—all without facing the pressures of unrealistic expectations or the threat of AIDS...
...A jaunty 1980s label for those who sit around all day like immobile lumps of complex carbohydrates, munching junk food and flicking channels, the Couch Potato image became a high-concept marketing idea: cuddly lounge spud dolls appeared on shelves in time for the 1988 Christmas season...
...Fax machines, PCs, VCRs, and CD players cast their spells on the most reluctant of technological inductees, while a mushrooming smorgasbord of byte-sized information sources continues to satisfy the appetites of hardened computer buffs...
...The battered typewriter and cubby-holed desk were replaced by Scandinavian curvilinear computer stations outfitted with the latest in mini-computers, laser printers, and fax machines...
...The worst they can catch is a computer virus...
...Where the office was once a place of social as well as work-related interaction, it may soon become merely the electronic switchyard and archival repository for home workers...
...Pluggies—those who are plugged in but tuned out—are fast developing as the heirs to the yuppie...
...Quietly, almost magically, the middle-class home sweet home has been transformed into an environment that now doubles as office, schoolhouse, shopping mall, health club, printshop, restaurant, even electronic bordello...
...This new work environment not only exudes high-tech, if spartan, good looks...
...The only way to get into trouble is to fool around with Dad's "MacPlaymate," a computer-generated dreamgirl who persuades the user to undress her and then make love to her on-screen (this program comes complete with a panic button so an employee can trade in the graphic graphics for a fake spreadsheet in case the boss walks in...
...the new-toy syndrome operates with telecommunications equipment as much as with Tinkertoys," Richard Saul Wurman writes in his 1988 book, Information Anxiety...
...But with no in-office time clock to punch or manager watching, at-home workers with untrusting bosses will undoubtedly be forced into the position of accepting just such productivity pay...
...With such carefully tended home fires blazing away, even baby boomers are looking back to the future, settling down to remake the domestic ideal in their own image...
...In the end, specializations will take the place of locals as the common denominator that unites and forms smaller groups...
...For a more human touch, the yellow pages are filled with personal trainers who will come to a client's home or office and put her or him through the paces personally...
...But as advances in transportation and communications technology created a global community, relative distances between even the most remote towns seemed to shrink...
...Leavitt goes on to reveal that throughout the couple's house, The outlets were stuffed with extenders...
...Self-sufficiency was a necessity, not a choice as it is today...
...Banking now can be done via computer in most major cities, as can shopping, bill paying, travel planning, and other minor errands...
...Simplicity is the key to Prodigy...
...And when they get bored with their studies, the kids can always switch on an animated football game or World War I dogfight...
...Over time, the home office can be expected to chip away at the established hierarchies and cycles of workplace structures and ethics...
...As for inner fitness, dozens of relaxation and subliminal health tapes can be popped into the VCR for hours of serene ocean scenes interspersed with secret whispers to quit smoking and give up french fries...
...When logged on (via modem and a password), the user sees graphics depicting a city...
...Activities that once demanded human contact, involvement, and interaction now can be performed by a dazzling array of consumer technologies...
...There were not enough plugs," David Leavitt writes in his 1988 novel, Equal Affections, describing the electronic dependencies of a pair of gay lawyers...
...A writer working on a story about pig farming in Indonesia can log on and quickly search for related magazine and newspaper articles, doctoral dissertations, statistical abstracts, State Department reports, agricultural studies, soil maps, and practically any other resource material known...
...Although such a set-up might have cost upward of $20,000 in the early 1980s, much of the basic hardware—a PC clone with a hard disk, monitor, and modem—now can be bought for under $1,000...
...Adding a new and prophetic twist to an old theme, a Prodigy financial network listing proclaims, "American Express: Don't Stay Home Without It...
...The new age of indoorsmanship was officially sanctioned...
...q WINTER • 1990 . 41...
...Pluggies on the road may be forced to deal with other passengers, desk clerks, and waiters, but once basic arrangements and details have been dispensed with, Pluggies can then retreat into their private world of bits and bytes...
...Nor are doctors the only professionals losing business to the closet culture: lawyers are being replaced by doityourself divorce and will kits, CPAs are being superseded by simple accounting and tax-filing software, and psychologists are being displaced by computerized Freuds and Jungs...
...The sociopolitical landscape of the 1980s holds a few clues...
...This ever-present web of cords, cables, and connectors serves as a more meaningful (if abstract) home symbol for those hardcore Pluggies who attach greater emotional significance to function than to environment...
...If home work catches on in big business, conglomerates and large corporations, already compartmentalized by virtue of their size and scope, will be further split up by their increasing number of off-site workers...
...The splintering of traditional family life due to divorce, single parenthood, and unmarried coupledom, combined with the home's new status as an electronic amusement park and office, has transformed the image of home...
...Indeed, pressure from NIMBYs led Nancy "Just Say No" Reagan to withdraw her support at the last minute from the Nancy Reagan Drug Rehabilitation Center, which had been slated to open in California...
...Until Pluggies began setting up shop, the home office was seen as either the book-lined den where one paid the bills and hid out from kids and cohorts, or the lair of writers and artists in need of solitude...
...But by the mid-1980s, the Hollywood-in-Washington scene began slowly to dissolve, fading out and then refocusing to reveal the scourges of cocaine addiction, AIDS, and homelessness...
...Thanks to modern technology, the home office has come into its own during the past decade...
...High-tech tools now can follow their owners to the bedroom or to the BMW: laptop computers, portable fax machines, and mobile phones (the granddaddy of tech totes) are turning the home office into a movable feast of labor...
...The reaction to this anxiety, Wurman says, is that people have begun to turn this 40 • DISSENT Culture In an Age of Money technological overkill against its own purpose, using it to block the very communications the machines ostensibly were purchased to facilitate...
...Safe within their own electronic world, Pluggies can revel in their self-image as the modern, closeted embodiment of the great domestic dream—as American as microwaved apple pie and video baseball...
...Functional (if not top-notch) printers and fax machines can be had for under $1,000...
...Now we are on the verge of coming full circle: with even the simplest of errands and tasks being performed by home computers, the fabric of daily social contact will grow thin again...
...Since man cannot live by sex alone, some restaurants in New York and Los Angeles now fax their menus daily to regular customers, who need only check off their order and fax it back for pick up or delivery later that day...
...One need look no farther than recent fiction to find evidence of this new domestic scene: "Now they lived through machines, they were addicted to machines...
...Electricity hummed through the house even when everything was turned off, wires connecting to other wires, other machines...
...As the taste for high-tech toys trickled down to the masses, manufacturers began producing lower-priced, simplified versions of the top-of-the-line items...
...Yuppies, once the most outwardly mobile of the upper middle class, have traded in their dancing shoes and one-night stands for sheepskin slippers and safe sex...
...wires tangled like matted hair under desks, cabinets, beneath the sofa...
...Developed jointly by Sears and IBM, Prodigy is leading the race to put a computer network in every home...
...Soon, if history does indeed repeat itself, there will be management programs developed to do nothing but "bust" union programs...
...Supermarkets, shopping malls, community colleges, and cultural centers that sprang up nationwide brought together a once disassociated population...
...Some home-based workers meet for lunch every day, just to get out of the house...
...The society that fled indoors under the blind, benevolent watch of the Reagan administration has now postdated its reasoning, reinstating the virtues of the tucked-away hearth and home as an excuse for shutting out the troubled world on the other side of the "Welcome" mat...
...incredibly inexpensive by industry standards ($9.95 a month, and the phone calls are usually local), it is also the first service to dish up advertising along with information...
...Unless employers institute a universal honor system, there will be invasive, home-based monitoring systems that will justi38 • DISSENT Culture in an Age of Money fiably raise the ire of Pluggies and will provide fodder for unions well into the next century...
...What Toffler failed to foresee was that, for Pluggies, technology itself has been molded into an intellectual shelter that overarches any physical landscape...
...Cushy old polyester deskchairs were traded in for state-of-the-art ergonomic seats and knee chairs designed (no doubt on computers) to reduce back strain during those long hours at the terminal...
...Early in the decade, the Reagan White House managed to erect a glittering, if shallow, facade of materialism and economic prosperity that helped camouflage the nation's unaddressed social problems...
...According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1985 some eighteen million Americans worked at home, either full-time or as a supplement to their day jobs...
...By 1988, the airwaves were offering soft drink commercials depicting couples pointedly staying home for the evening and a television game show (featuring nothing but questions about television) entitled "Couch Potatoes...
...More insidiously than any other decade in our history, the 1980s have delivered unto us (and into our homes) the promises of past futurists: sit back, relax, and let your fingers do the walking across the universe of simulated experience...
...The social aspect of local chapter gatherings will fade as national and international organizations stage meetings on screen...
...Instead, he predicted, people would increasingly attach the emotional qualities of "home" to wherever they happened to be at the time...
...With no central focus, unions will seek ways to universalize their negotiation and labor protection efforts by developing self-help computer programs to diagnose and resolve virtually any difficulty, possibly through direct negotiation with the computers of the employer...
...Just as workers will be telecommuting to their offices, so will they be telecommuting to union meetings...
...Unfortunately, for all the benefits of efficient home employment, the very nature of the beast isolates people from their coworkers and colleagues...
...On January 1, 1987, the Washington Post's annual "In/Out" list proclaimed that "cocooning" (the act of cuddling up at home with loved ones and pets) was in—and partying all night was out...
...Although most people who work at home are either self-employed or on the staff of small firms, large organizations are now poised to start allowing employees to work at home...
...Another issue will be benefits or reimbursements related to the use of home equipment for office use...
...With coworkers communicating by fax or modem instead of at the coffee machine or in the conference room, the spirits of teamwork or head-to-head competition that many workplaces promote may soon be a thing of the past...
...In the past, the home was a symbol of warmth and comfort, a place to spend leisure time and pursue hobbies...
...But why should they shun such natural human contact...
...People can even engage in civic activism without leaving home: citizens in Santa Monica can link their computers to city hall, electronically communicating questions and opinions on matters that once would have required a trip downtown...
...The great, electronic indoors beckons all but a stalwart few into the home technology whirlwind...
...Indeed, today's Pluggies could well spawn an entire generation of self-created, selfsufficient, self-absorbed agoraphobes, confined to an electronic house of their own making...
...Slides and swingsets stand empty as couches crowd with kids playing high-resolution video games...
...It has not, however, been all smooth sailing...
...Since the once-sacred concepts of company loyalty and personal commitment undoubtedly will be weakened by the lack of direct contact with the employer and coworkers, home workers simply may soak up all they need to know about a business and then quit to start one of their own...
...Contact beyond the family and a few neighbors was minimal because of distance and smaller population centers...
...Toffler, noting the growing transiency inherent in modern lifestyles, pointed out that home could no longer be seen as a single, fixed place...
...Research isn't the only job that has been tamed by technology...
...Contracts now can be read and revised, plans approved, and itineraries established within minutes rather than days...
...Thus, the portability of computers, fax machines, phones, television sets, CD players and other travel gadgets lets them take their "home" on the road in a very real sense...
...The level of contact with others becomes a matter of choice...
...but those more addicted to the insular society of the closet culture may never meet their clients or employers face to face...
...When the group workplace is thus broken up into self-contained, single unit Pluggiedoms, the unions representing those workers will be forced to address the cries of a thousand separate complaints...
...In our enthusiasm to exercise our new machinery, we create unnecessary anxiety...
...Reagan's sudden reversal caused many of the center's wealthy supporters to demand that their donations be returned...
...The oncenecessary work of accountants and bookkeepers, researchers, secretaries, typesetters, telex operators, mailroom managers, and other support staff is now handled by myriad software programs, databases, desktop publishing systems, modems, and fax machines...
...Children can sit down at their own starter computers (with their own miniworkstation furniture) and study most of the same subjects they learn in school...
...Nearly all of life's pleasures, as well as its bare necessities, now can be imported into the home at the touch of a button or through doityourself kits...
...Even Hollywood's New Age sage is getting into the act: "Shirley MacLaine's Inner Workout" videotape ($29.95) arrived on the market in early 1989 with promises of inner peace through relaxation and "self-reduction...
...Entire computer systems now can be purchased for less than the cost of a single component ten years ago...
...Likewise, desktop publishing has also revolutionized the way people communicate—slick publications and advertisements can be designed and reproduced using a home computer rather than paying and waiting for typesetting and paste-up...
...Summing it all up is a system called "Prodigy...
...NIMBY" ("Not In My Back Yard") became the battle cry of neighborhoods and communities fiercely opposed to the local placement of proposed substance-abuse clinics and homeless shelters...
...When showrooms and catalogs for The Sharper Image and other elite-tech boutiques began appearing nationwide, larger and more mainstream retailers, including Radio Shack and Sears, jumped on the bandwagon...
...If meditation doesn't make you feel better, there's a plethora of home medical kits on the market that can test for pregnancy, fertility, high blood pressure, diabetes, colon cancer and (coming soon) even AIDS...
...The aggravations of commuting to and from work, combined with the growing number of two-career couples now starting families, have helped make the home-based office a popular alternative to the nine-to-five rat race...
...Most time-consuming facets of paperwork have been all but eliminated...
...All that changed with the 1980s lionization of entrepreneurial stars like Steve Jobs, whose Apple Computers started a wave of high-tech equipment that was so user-friendly it jeopardized the role of the family dog...
...Suddenly, working at home became glamorous...
...America, still primed to "stay the course" with Reagan, responded by backing away in horror from its modern-day plagues, embracing a full-scale siege mentality of ethnic and economic elitism...
...IBM is experimenting with flexible schedules for some workers (especially new mothers), allowing them to split their work time between home and office...
...Soon to follow were loungewear fashions for haute cocooners and down-filled sleeping bags designed with the couch, not the campsite, in mind...
...Letters can be delivered by fax in seconds with nary a growling dog in the foyer...
...If he wants to go shopping, he tells the computer to go to the mall, where he can "explore" several floors of shops, catalog listings, and other purchasing venues...
...More information can be downloaded in an hour by computer modem than a librarian could dig up in a month...
...Once upon a time most Americans lived in relatively rural isolation...
...This new asocial animal is a creature of comfort and convenience, overstimulated by artificial intelligence and instant gratification, but underexposed to genuine experience and the virtues of patience...
...Once the information has been located, the writer can pick and chose what's appropriate, download it through the modem, and store it on disk or print it out—all within the time it might take to drive to a library with far fewer research materials...
...Such business recycling will have an intriguing impact on the way an employee moves up the corporate ladder, not to mention the ways in which product patents are enforced and corporate secrets protected...
...But by 1988, according to the National Work-At-Home Survey conducted by New York's LINK Resources, the number of home workers had jumped to about twenty-five million Americans, a 40 percent increase in only three years...
...Where once we were excited by the prospect of new information and welcomed those devices, such as the telegraph, the telephone, and the radio, that brought us closer to the world, now we have begun to use technology to screen our communications," Wurman writes, noting the growing use of telephone answering machines to screen out callers rather than to take their messages...
...Even for the most technically accomplished Pluggie, information overload can be a threat...
...User-friendly technologies have given everyone the keystroke to the computer kingdom...
...And the unions themselves, lacking the hands-clasped camaraderie engendered by the friendship of co-workers and local meetings, will evolve into watered down professional societies with massive data bases and electronic bulletin boards...
...Once workers move back home such issues as work environment quality, child care, and commuting benefits will recede in importance...
...Specific projects will be contracted out more frequently to independent specialists, leaving full-time employees (both in and out of the office) with the more amorphous, and perhaps less fulfilling, tasks of management and development...
...Such faltering companies could then become buy-out fodder for the very same conglomerates the workers left behind in the first place...
...The lowly telephone has been redefined as the conduit for dial-a-porn, Domino's Pizza, call-waiting and conference calls...
...Placing an order is as simple as pressing a button and typing in a credit card number...
...Thus, competition for clients and customers will heat up considerably amidst this breeding ground for small companies, many of which may not survive the battle...
...Thus preserved from the anxieties of the outside world, Pluggies can move through their entire lives via a series of invisible networks...
...Fax technology has quickly replaced the overnight letter and telex as hard-copy communication...
Vol. 37 • January 1990 • No. 1
