We’re getting there. This time it’s not just some wishful thinking or cheerleading on my part. The days that we were bound to a desktop or even a laptop to be productive are coming to an end.
But what will take their place then? Difficult to say really. If one were to be taking bets back in the late 70s as to what the workplace of the 2010s would look like I would hazard to guess that no one would assume that the office typing pool would have disappeared or that the vast rooms filled with filing cabinets would give way to mainframes that would store magnitudes more data than they ever could. We were simply not ready to imagine this back then.
Will we ever be free of the physical office space? I rather doubt it. Humans have a need for personal contact that no computer camera or office meeting software can provide.
Certainly the software and hardware aspects will become moot points in the discussion within the next 5 to 10 years. I am in fact typing this out on my smartphone and although it is a bit awkward, the auto-correct works well and the hardware can handle most of the productivity software on the market. I could, in a pinch, work like this for an extended period of time. Wouldn’t be the most comfortable thing, but it could be done.
I imagine with speech recognition and advanced touchscreen controls that we could make the experience less cumbersome and much more user friendly.
No, I think that the main argument will center round how can we leverage the producers of content and product. Does increasing a person’s personal comfort equate to higher returns or do producers need to have an overseer or peers to boost their performance.
Will we one day return to the old office model just from a need to bond with others? Who can say for certain.
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