The future of…

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The future of the office

Feb 1999

The future office will be strongly affected by the changing nature of work. People will increasingly be employed on short-term contracts with virtual companies or participate in virtual co-operatives. They may often work from home or in telework centres. The telework centres may house the best of technology, with holodeck style meeting rooms and hot desks. For many people there may be no permanent 'office'.

We can expect a great deal of assistance from computers and robots in our future work, making us much more productive. Computers in ten years time may understand and speak most major languages, making it much easier to communicate with them. They may even understand gestures and body language. Adding talking head technology and synthetic personalities will make the user interface cuddly and pleasant to use. Technophobia by then will be history. The computer will even recognise when the user is feeling stressed, or depressed, and may alter its characteristics accordingly.

Computers will of course be linked together by high-speed networks and the boundaries between machines will be very blurred. Some processes may execute locally, others remotely. The user will have easy access not only to information around the world, but services and processing too, with seamless electronic commerce allowing transparent use.

Future screen technology allow thin displays to lie flat on desk tops just as paper does today. The size of today's desk is determined largely by the amount of space it takes to lay out papers and equipment to do the job effectively. As costs fall rapidly, it will be possible to have a screen of about the same area. Some of it may be horizontal, some vertical, or it may curve to give an immersive desk space. Or there might be multiple displays with specific uses.

The display may replace plastic phones and calculators with virtual equipment. Part of the display may also act as a scanner, and some or all of it may be touch sensitive. Virtual equipment in virtual environments may even become the standard interface, with videoconferencing and internet browsing all integrated into a pleasant virtual world, personalised by that user.

Anti-noise technology will make it possible to have a degree of privacy even in an open-plan office.

While it is possible to make 3 dimensional displays, one means of doing so is to use goggles with a display for each eye. Further in the future, goggles (and earphones) could be replaced by active contact lenses. Electronic displays can then be mixed or overlaid on the real world vision, in any balance from total transparency to complete substitution of real by synthetic. Terminator or Robocop style displays would thus be possible, as would totally synthetic environments. People could work with their colleagues around the world, both real and computer, almost as if they shared the same office. They could meet from their desks, or sometimes they may share rooms with other people, and large screens could extend these meeting rooms both into virtual space and other real offices. People may be present physically, remotely, or by proxy. Talking head and agent technology could work well together to allow the computer to stand in for us when we are not available personally. This will allow us to effectively be in many places at once. Geography will be much less significant, and computer proxies help reduce the problems of time zones.

Apart from their use as proxy when we are away, agents will eventually become so intelligent that they are colleagues rather than electronic tools. And of course, in some cases they will evolve from tool to apprentice to assistant to master, replacing us completely.

The future office will make widespread use of chips, not just in computers, but in our environment. A wide variety of sensors will monitor the work environment and adjust it for our comfort. They may alter the office climate, and may respond to stress or discomfort. They will monitor equipment, arrange for testing or repair before the user has even noticed a fault, and connect appliances together. They will allow appliances to adjust for the preferences of the occupants, diverting calls to the nearest terminal, wherever the person roams. A badge that would be at home on Star Trek will act as a computer interface when we are on the move, there really is little point in taking a heavy computer when all that is needed is the interface. This badge will relay information between the person and the computer or any other network service. It will use the active contact lens to display the information or read it out into the earphones. The badge may also have lots of information and computing power resident. It may act to replace the electronic business card, exchanging information automatically with other people's badges, helping us to network effectively and make new contacts or even friends. Of course, all it really needs is an identifier, and everything else could be network resident, all our preferences and personal files could be stored on the badge, but why bother. It is easier and safer to hold them on the network.

In fact, in many circumstances, the badge is superfluous completely, since iris scan or other biometric technology can identify us safely and thereby bring any relevant information across the network. There are times though when a badge will be needed. There isn't always a biometric ID system to hand. If we are just walking along a street or chatting at a coffee break during a conference, it is still valuable to exchange information with our surroundings and with other people. Although the information can certainly be transmitted via the network, there still needs to be some sort of switch device to tell it to do so and with whom. Some electronic identifier and transponder is therefore needed. This could be anything from Kevin Warwick's chip in a glass tube, to a fully-fledged active badge. We can implant it, wear it, or carry it, but whatever it is, we need it with us.