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"My office is a warehouse of unfinished tasks," says Esther Dyson. |
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| Sorting through the in- and out-boxes of an electronic age by Amy Goldwasser "My office is a warehouse of unfinished tasks," says Esther Dyson, chair of EDventure Holdings. "What I'm mostly trying to do when I'm in here is get rid of all the paper. I'm happier when I'm on the road and it's all on my computer." Dyson, 47, estimates that she's in her office in New York's Flatiron district only about a quarter of the time. Otherwise, she's with laptop doing business in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere for her company, which generates capital for the development of emerging information technologies worldwide; promoting her seminal book, Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age (Broadway Books, 1997), published in 18 languages and just released in paperback in the States; and doing research for various conferences she leads and boards she sits on. Dyson doesn't have a computer or even a phone at home, two blocks from her office, but when she's working (read: traveling) she conducts almost all her business by e-mail. "It's seamless," she says. "I even get interoffice e-mail, like 'Whoever left the soup in the fridge... ' I like it. It makes me feel at home and keeps me from going nuts when I'm, say, coming off five overnight flights in one week." So, as a technological thought leader (her name generates more than 2,500 exact matches on the large Internet search engines) who has successfully streamlined the workplace to virtual space, how does Dyson feel about her decidedly low-tech physical space? "I would like it to be tidier, and I'm not proud of it," she says of an office whose most technological elements are a few CDs scattered on the floor and a standard telephone. "But I'm resigned to it, and it's where I like to come back to." |
Keywords:
Esther Dyson, Edventure Holdings, office