Armed with a slim laptop and a Wi-Fi hot spot, Bobbie Carlton used to work everywhere—coffee shops, clients’ offices. The 56-year-old, who runs an online speakers’ platform, felt like the archetype of the modern worker. “Cords are for old people,” she explained.

Now 50 feet of Ethernet cable snakes through her 100-year-old house in Lexington, Mass., climbing over doorways, running up the staircase, taped to the floor of the upstairs hall. It’s seriously ugly, she acknowledges.

“Good God, this is, like, me in the ’80s,” she says.

And yet, she loves it. 

“I’m sitting down, and I’m plugging in,” she says.