这家公司提出的更大、更泛泛的创意则是让地点与工作不相关。虽然纽约、伦敦和新加坡等城市拥有大批人才,但从理论上讲,他们应该在世界上任何一个地方都可以工作。

The greater and broader idea this company proposed is to make location irrelevant to work. While there is are a large number of talents in cities like New York, London and Singapore, theoretically, they should be competent with work elsewhere in the world.

问题在于,现代生活一个最大的矛盾是,物理接近(physical proximity)变得越来越重要,即便技术和交通让远距离联系的成本越来越低。这种现象被称为“杰文斯悖论”(Jevons paradox),效率提高会导致人们对某些商品或服务进行更多的消费,而非更少的消费。信息技术的进步也面临同样的悖论,导致互补性面对面接触的需要越来越强烈。事实表明,人口稠密城市远比人口稀少城市更适合知识主导型经济的发展。

One of the biggest paradoxes we are facing now in the modern times is that physical proximity is becoming increasingly important, even though technology and transportation make cost for long-distance communication lower and lower. It is called Jevons paradox, where the improvements in efficiency tend to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of certain goods or services.

Advances in information technology are also encountered with the same paradox that a greater development taken place in IT will lead to an obvious rise of need for complementary face-to-face contact. The fact demonstrates that densely populated cities are more suitable for the development of knowledge-oriented economy than sparsely populated ones.

From: The Techcrunch

Translated by Ashley, CCJK Technologies Co.,Ltd.