If you don’t get your work done, you lose your job, so whether you have internet access or not doesn’t much matter. You will regulate your own distraction or you will perish.
That being said, there can sometimes be lots of downtime in office work. I imagine that the internet is there because it LOOKS a lot like doing actual work. It’s much easier for the employee to pretend he’s working, and it’s much easier for the boss to pretend she hasn’t noticed her employees are being unproductive. A boss that sees her employee spends four hours a day chatting at the water cooler has to “address the problem” to save face. If her employees stay in their cubes she can lie more convincingly to her superiors that everyone in her department is quite busy. It is simply covert idleness.
Just channeling my inner Hanson. (for what it’s worth, I do all my LessWrong reading/posting from work)
If you don’t get your work done, you lose your job, so whether you have internet access or not doesn’t much matter. You will regulate your own distraction or you will perish.
That being said, there can sometimes be lots of downtime in office work. I imagine that the internet is there because it LOOKS a lot like doing actual work. It’s much easier for the employee to pretend he’s working, and it’s much easier for the boss to pretend she hasn’t noticed her employees are being unproductive. A boss that sees her employee spends four hours a day chatting at the water cooler has to “address the problem” to save face. If her employees stay in their cubes she can lie more convincingly to her superiors that everyone in her department is quite busy. It is simply covert idleness.
Just channeling my inner Hanson. (for what it’s worth, I do all my LessWrong reading/posting from work)