Rafferty Pendery - A Future With A View

There are people among us right now who are living in a future that remains a flickering haze to the rest of us.

Recently I had the opportunity to interview one of those people. I came away from that interview with a profoundly changed view of what lies down the road for all of us.

Rafferty (Raffy) Pendery is one of those people who is actively putting into place the future that the rest of us will be living in. I think you'll be interested in seeing this future through the eyes of one of its' creators.

Mr. Pendery, the founder and CEO of the web design company, Studio98, has a vision of the future that is vastly different from the main stream media vision of a ruined planet that is overcrowded and polluted. In Mr. Pendery's future, the bulk of the population makes its' living in some form of information technology and is free to live and work where ever their wants and interests lead them.

This interview came to mind when I recently I traveled across the country. We drove for hours through vast stretches of open, unused land. I was awed by the feeling of emptiness and space that comes from being able to stretch my arms out in all directions without hitting my neighbor's nose. I could look from horizon to horizon and not see any of the usual effects of human habitation. "There's nothing here", I thought to myself. And then I saw the cell towers and realized there is something that runs through all this vast emptiness. Running through all that seeming isolation was the World Wide Web. Sitting at a rest stop outside Shawnee, Oklahoma, I could open my laptop and instantly contact anyplace on the globe. From a picnic table by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, I could conduct the business of my web design company. I could have a conference with our designers in Chile and across the United States online in real time. I checked my bank balance online and also got online with paypal and paid some sub contractors. I got on Google and did some research for an article I was writing. I could have pitched a tent right there and stayed for a week or a month and still been able to run my company without missing a beat.

Sitting on a concrete bench at a roadside rest stop, I got a fleeting glimpse of the future that Rafferty Pendery and other web-oriented businessmen are making possible. Mr. Pendery actively encourages the people in his company to explore other options besides living in a crowded city hemmed in on all sides. He believes that the need for cities has run its course. The only thing that really keeps people hanging around cities is their consideration that they need to be there. All of us tend to drag around beliefs that are no longer valid. Raffy Pendery is one of those rare individuals who can easily shed unworkable beliefs and ideas when presented with new, more usable data. It is this ability that has put Studio98 on the cutting edge of an already cutting edge technology. He believes that by encouraging his employees to explore other options to living in overcrowded, polluted cities, he is contributing to creating a saner more aesthetic planet for all of us.

As we were driving across the panhandle of Texas and then across northern Oklahoma I realized that we could take the entire population of Los Angeles and sprinkle it across this vast landscape and it would barely create an impact. The space to expand is almost unlimited in this country. Unfortunately we've been sold a bushel basket of lies that perpetuate the notion that empty land is precious, rare and beyond the reach of the majority of the inhabitants of this country. It's these lies that have been foisted on us that are keeping us bunched up in postage sized pieces of ground where our field of vision ends with the fence surrounding our tiny piece of dirt.

I spotted a little farm for sale in Oklahoma and decided I'm going to buy that farm. I can buy ten acres with a house, a barn and a pond for far less than the tiny plot of land I have in Los Angeles. It has a long wide porch in the back with a couple of comfortable, well-worn wicker chairs overlooking the pond and woods beyond. I'm going to sit on that porch, typing away on my laptop connected to the World Wide Web. I'm going to be living where I want to and working on what I want to do and loving every second of it. I'd like to invite you to look at the future through Raffy Pendery's eyes, shake off those old ideas about cities, grab your laptop and link and head for the wide open spaces of the future. I'll leave a chair for you on the back porch. You're welcome to join me any time.

For more information on this article, go to:
Rafferty Pendery
or

Rafferty Pendery’s Blog

Or

Rafferty Pendery - Entrepreneur

Article written by Dianne Cook