Where Will the Office be?

By Stefano Casciani - 8 January 2010

Just before the beginning of the eighties, Bob Geldof and his band shot to world fame with a song whose refrain became familiar to everyone, even if very few at the time really understood the meaning. Like any self-respecting punk-pop band, they told a (true) story of a 17 years old Californian girl who one fine Monday took her father’s shotgun and started shooting at her school from her bedroom window, wounding many school kids and killing the head and the janitor. The song’s title is the girl’s answer to why she did what she did - a crazed version of the Monday morning blues that afflict many, who, of course don’t then kill colleagues and superiors (although on occasion, it might solve many a problem, not least that of psychological harassment). 25 years on, the idea of a microchip implanted in the human body strikes us as prophetic as it is plausible: a microchip to enhance our interactive capacity with the world and the infinite number of electronic interfaces we come across in our daily fight for survival. Especially at work, which practically everywhere involves ICT, as the prehistoric ‘tertiary’ sector becomes - or has become - the ‘primary’ sector.
Many sci-fi flights of fancy have been generated in the wake of absolutist forecasts that in the future work will entail ever smaller, ever more sophisticated machines. Some claim that the office will be increasingly impalpable, a series of electromagnetic waves travelling miraculously between every kind of object or person to enable the communication and manufactures necessary for everyday life. We are not yet at that stage, however, nor are we likely to be for some time. Sure, there may well be a few authentic, super-paid, nomadic workers with no working hours or time attendance requirements moving freely around the world with just a latest generation cell phone that can read and write e-mail, send faxes, draw, and send sound, visual or film documents and anything else imaginable, creating a non-existent,...