NINE

Better Than Being There

The Spectrum of Place and Time

Imagine a world

in which it is easy to move between in-person and virtual experiences. In this future world, we will always be online and enhanced, unless we choose to be offline. While the goal of virtual meetings used to be approximate face-to-face meetings, the new mantra will be to create ways of working that are better than in-person offices alone. Better ways of working, better ways of living, better ways of making the future. COVID-19 hybrid work was only an incremental step toward the officeverse—a nested network of networks.

Officeverse Emerging
Illustration by Joseph Press, augmented by Midjourney, an AI art generator using the prompts collaboration, multiverse, people, technology, solarpunk, place, space, virtual, working, and office.
After reading this chapter, consider how you might illustrate your story about the Spectrum of Place and Time.

Way back in 2008, when renowned workplace architect Frank Duffy introduced his vision for the “networked office,” he asked this provocative question: “Why should empowered and self-reliant people, equipped with increasingly powerful information technology, ever come to work at all?”¹ Few people listened to Duffy at the time. Then, the COVID-19 office shutdowns happened, and work-at-a-distance was suddenly required for everyone.

Now, it is impossible to go back to the office the way that it was. As illustrated in figure 15, the choices for the office of the future are up for grabs. Thinking futureback, this chapter starts from the early hybrid offices but goes deeply into future media options that will gradually become available in the emerging officeverse.

FIGURE 15:
Spectrum of Place and Time

During the office lockout, workers without offices were surprisingly productive with simple technologies and no advance preparation. Workers surprised many traditional managers by getting a lot of office work done without going to the office at all.

The COVID-19 experience, however, was deeply unfair. For those with no private space to work, poor connectivity, inadequate furniture, or children who needed their attention, work from home was Herculean. For others, however, a door was cracked opened to reveal a new way of office working that was better than being there in their old offices. Office shock opened opportunities to reimagine where, when, and how office work might be done in the future.

The COVID-19 shutdown let the mules of change loose. Impossible offices became possible.

Offices do not need to remain places stuck in the past. We can create exciting new ways of working and living that were prototyped during the pandemic. Where, when, how, and even why we work will never be the same again. But we must make smart choices to create better futures for working and living. There will be many opportunities and many pitfalls ahead.

Today’s Hybrid Offices Are Only Temporary

The COVID-19 office lockdowns demanded careful consideration about when and how to return to office buildings. Tough decisions about offices and officing confronted individuals, organizations, and communities. Many architectural firms,² researchers,³ and consultants,⁴ made recommendations about the hybrid office. By “hybrid work,” most people mean combinations of work in offices and work from home or other locations. That was a useful definition during the initial COVID-19 shutdown, but it was only temporary. This is a chance to think future-back about where we work, when we work, how we work, and what we work on.

Boundaries Are Just Starting to Be Redrawn

New social protocols are signals of what is now needed to navigate work and private life. For example, one of our clients, who is an executive at a very large company, added this footer to his email messages during the COVID-19 shutdown: “If you get an email from me outside normal office hours, it’s because I’m sending it at a time convenient to me. I don’t expect you to read or reply until normal office hours.”

Some companies are already developing guidelines and policies for hybrid offices, to help people draw appropriate lines between work and private life. During the COVID-19 lockdowns meetings were scheduled to inconvenience as few people as possible. However, with home officing across time zones, there were still many who attended at what was their dinner or bedtime. Choices about how available you must be for your work colleagues are already changing the scheduling game. Work hours are up for grabs for many people. The boundaries are not there anymore like they were. Work/life balance seems impossible in this world, but work/life navigation seems more urgent than ever.⁵

As illustrated in figure 16, the emerging officeverse will involve many choices. Fixed boundaries between inside and outside will be remnants of the old office. Leaders will need to decide how much freedom to give for people to design their own places versus how much we want to determine the design of places. Futureback thinking will allow people and organizations to reimagine how, where, and when they work.

FIGURE 16: Officeverse Emerging. Expect new mixes of physical, virtual, on-demand working spaces.

Hybrid Office Choices

Office buildings provide same time/same place options for communication and other kinds of office work. There are distinct advantages to in-person meetings and the culture of offices, but there are also constraints. You must commute to an office and only one person can speak at a time during in-person meetings, for example. Still, in-person meetings will continue to be preferable for many types of meetings and office work.

Virtual meetings like video or audio teleconferencing are same time/different place. They provide more of a sense of presence than a conference call, but they do require good planning and attentive participation to be effective and efficient.

Factories or stores are same place/different times. Another example is to think of a document as a “place” where multiple authors can work on the same document at different times. In these cases, physical presence is required to do the work, but people are using the same location at different times. The media of communication must work well across work shifts to provide continuity.

Home offices or regional hubs are different times/different places. This communication is asynchronous since people are working at different times—often day and night. These media work particularly well across time zones or when great flexibility in work hours is required.

The hybrid office is here, but looking futureback about office shock, we need to ask why we do office work and with whom we want to work. To think full spectrum about these questions, we will need to rethink and resculpt place and time.

The hybrid office is just a first step toward the officeverse: an emerging environment offering new options across the entire map of anytime/anyplace.

Embracing our new capability to work in different places and at different times shatters both the physical and temporal dimensions of the office—this is the officeverse. The officeverse is the mule in the place and time spectrum, a multisensory and multimedia place for collaboration, that provides the opportunity to choose the best options for matching the nature of the work with how, where, and when it is done. The Spectrum of Place and Time provides a way to look at the span of choices available between working in an office building and working in the officeverse.

Beyond Today’s Hybrid Offices

Boundaries will be redrawn, with many more possibilities to consider.

Collaborative spaces in virtual and augmented reality will be available for immersive, embodied, and even tactile officing. But for many they remain unusual and foreign and will require training and much more contact with the tools to establish proficiency. However, the potential for enriching office work, enhancing interactions, and expanding professional and social connections is unlimited.

Although many companies and individuals will try very hard to own and control it, the officeverse will take on a virtual life of its own. Mules that disrupted place and time in the real world will only be more extreme in the officeverse. In the officeverse, place and time will be different. This new world will be a far cry from today’s hybrid offices. Already, the boundaries between work and private life are being pierced. Work from home can be great, but overwork from home can be awful.

As the workplace is co-created by citizens of the officeverse, the activities occurring within it will disrupt many of today’s organizational models. Originally designed to structure and control the complexities of human interactions, organizational charts will be irrelevant in the officeverse. Managing the challenges of the officeverse will require conceptual changes of the importance of time, deadlines, sequencing of tasks, and the effects on individuals of all of these.

With many possible connections, trust in the officeverse will require artful nurturing and negotiation. While technology is important for office connectivity, the most essential social technology is trust. The need for trust will be acute in a future with more online interaction and less physical interaction. Institute for the Future research has suggested that it is very difficult to seed and grow trust through using social media. On the other hand, it is very easy to seed distrust and mistrust through social media.⁶

Employee activity tracking technology was sometimes used during the pandemic as an unpopular tool to track the behavior of individual knowledge workers. It will be easier to measure performance, but harder to observe people while they work. If a company focuses on performance, rather than time sitting at a desk, that will give workers a much wider range of choices regarding when and where they work.

In anticipation of Web3 and quantum computing changing the virtual game completely,⁷ blockchain-enabled technologies like smart contracts will offer the potential to replace those primitive efforts and allow independence in fulfilling work responsibilities.⁸ In virtual worlds, some form of monitoring activity will be ubiquitous, so trust will be an issue. Like the trust developed in video game communities, new ways of nurturing trust will emerge in the officeverse.⁹ The foundation of trust in the officeverse will ultimately be built on creating a shared language and opportunities to mobilize people for better futures of working and living.

As Marshall McLuhan said, “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”¹⁰ The officeverse will be a network of networks, with tools that will shape us in disruptive and surprising ways over the next decade and beyond.

Digital natives (twenty-seven or younger in 2023) and XR natives (seventeen or younger in 2023) are experiencing ahead-of-their-times digital interfaces via video gaming platforms. They are creating their own worlds, developing social networks, and (probably unknown to them) preparing for the office of the future. Gamers are often way ahead of today’s average office worker in terms of being future-ready. The digital and XR natives will have a competitive advantage in the officeverse.

Your Persona, Your Space

You will get to choose or create your own avatar to establish your identity in the virtual officeverse. You will have many choices, and avatars will be about much more than appearance. They signal who you want to be and how you want to present yourself to others. You can create a version of yourself that may range from current traits to something more aspirational. Avatars will be extensions of you, and may even enable you to be in multiple places at the same time. An MIT Technology Review cover story introduces readers to the next generation’s multiple selves.¹¹

In the popular book and movie Ready Player One, the avatars do not look like the real person’s physical body, but they do embody the spirit and aspirations of that person. Avatars will be designed to adapt to the world you are in, constantly adjusting to the animate and inanimate objects in your environment. They will project your facial expressions and physical movements, and you will be able to give yourself an upgrade or redesign whenever you like. Over time, your avatar’s capabilities will grow since your avatar is a container of your information, data, and experience and a distributor of information about you to the officeverse.

How Will You Dodge the Uncanny Valley?

To succeed, the officeverse must eventually bridge what Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori called the “uncanny valley,”¹² where robots are almost human looking but not quite, in an eerie and disturbing way. On the other side of that valley, we will be better than being there. In the officeverse, we will all be high-fidelity digital humans—but still be ourselves.¹³

Automated and accurate language translation, complemented with bodily gestures captured and communicated via haptic suits, which bring lifelike sensations to the wearer, will increase comprehension. Facial mimicry will enable not only cognitive empathy but emotional empathy as well. The interoperability between platforms will enable the interoperability between people.

With avatars, the workplace playing field can be fairer. Gender, age, ethnicity, and other physical traits can be hidden or less apparent, unless you want them to be visible. You can form relationships with others that perhaps you would not have considered in the real world. Our avatars can moderate prejudice based on gender, ethnicity, or any physical attributes or disabilities. Potentially, communication among avatars may be more authentic and less prejudiced. Discrimination, potentially, should be decreased in the officeverse.

Challenges and risks will not go away in the officeverse, but they will be different. Avoiding inappropriate behavior and cultural appropriation will require training and monitoring. As we have seen in the use of current social media, balancing digital with physical interaction will remain important, and avoiding physical isolation in favor of electronic relationships will continue to be a challenge for some. Loneliness became an issue during the lockdowns of the pandemic despite extensive social media use. MIT social scientist Sherry Turkle concluded in her research that young people are often “alone together” in digital environments.¹⁴ We believe that when the office is part of the digital social technology,¹⁵ your workplace can make you feel alone together if you are not mixing your digital and in-person experiences.

Blending your real self with your online persona will be essential in the officeverse. This extremely creative exercise will be relevant for everyone in the office, regardless of role or way of working. The new office will need to offer people the flexibility to express their creativity. Fortunately, there is an entire generation growing up with digital experiences. They are shaping new dimensions of living and playing, which will reshape where and when we work.

Designing Your Own Workspace

The visionary workplace architect Fritz Haller sought to create a system for users to design their homes, their offices, and even their cities.¹⁶ Echoing similar positions from architects like N. John Habraken¹⁷ and Ezio Manzini,¹⁸ Haller’s intention was to give inhabitants more agency in building design. While participatory design is still an active approach,¹⁹ scaling of size and culture remains a significant hurdle to realizing the ideal.²⁰

In the officeverse, there will be great potential (if organizations agree) for people to design their own spaces and work the way they want to work. As the dimensions of place are being created before our eyes, spaces in the officeverse are disconnecting architects from the classic archetypes of workspaces. In the officeverse, you can be transported to any virtual environment. Traditional water cooler conversations are great at times, but they require people to be at the same water cooler at the same time. With a choice of virtual environments, creativity, personal expression, and social belonging can span time and place.

In the physical office space, managers and designers decided what people wanted in their office environments. Did young talent want a more playful environment that included Ping-Pong tables? How does that decision affect their older coworkers? What designs were equally attractive to employees of all genders? What customizations were employees allowed to make in their environments? Creating a sense of comfort and belonging in the office space has been a continuing challenge.

In the officeverse, everyone can create their custom environment. Creative collaboration and serendipitous interactions are the pure pleasures of today’s office that many people miss. In the officeverse, our opportunities to create, collaborate, and learn will be spectacular. Early research suggests that people recall information better when they learn through virtual reality.²¹ This research tested visual memory (like the game Concentration) and found that the immersive nature of VR helped participants increase their correct answers by almost 9 percent. The officeverse will be a critical catalyst in shifting mindsets away from executing routine tasks to exercising imagination, making, and systemic thinking, which are essential skills for the postpandemic economy,²² and skills that many young people learn through gaming.

In video gaming environments, creativity is the currency.²³ These worldbuilders are not only tinkering with basic blocks but also co-creating with others. They are reshaping the virtual dimensions of living and working with creative collaboration fueled by serendipitous interactions between real people and virtual objects. In his book Beautiful Minecraft, James Delaney shares images of fantastic and stunning artistic expression in this kid-oriented virtual world.²⁴

Creating a customized office will also allow the physical world to contribute to one’s sense of self-identity and self-fulfillment. Interior design choices like colors, furnishings, and finishes will be tailored to please the individual creator’s eye and mind. The same virtual environment can even generate different views for different people. Extreme personalization will enable exploration of new extremes of thought, new personal agency, and possibly a new sense of purpose.

The Timeless Meaning of Place

Architects are schooled in the Roman concept of genius loci, the protective spirit of a place. Genius loci is less about the physical environment and more about the timeless meaning of place. It is the attributes of the environment that are impregnated with memories, emotions, and resonance. In an officeverse, the role of place will be very different—but even more important.

Place has always been a platform for social experience. From open-air or covered marketplaces to the piazza for community gathering and cultural events, social interaction was always the real attraction. Shopping together, playing together, learning together, and working together are integral parts of human history. The officeverse will be a place for new forms of interaction.

Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of virtual reality, builds on McLuhan stating that our experiences in the virtual worlds will ultimately teach us how to see and be sensitive to stimuli in the real world. His experience of being in a real forest was enriched in a visceral way after spending time in a VR forest—the digital brought a greater appreciation of the analog.²⁵ Such convergence can establish an amplified presence that has the feel of “being there” regardless of physical location and time dimensions.

Places reshaped by office shock can promote new serendipity and sociability among individuals, organizations, and communities. Physical buildings and their surrounding areas can create a very attractive culture of communities. They can reflect a corporate culture and facilitate the growth of that culture.

However, there will be a need to develop new principles, guidelines, rules, and practices in the officeverse. When private information becomes public, the pain for an individual, a company, or a government could be severe. New concepts of sharing and boundary management will develop, and there will be many challenges. By learning how to coordinate in the officeverse, we will have new insight on how to better coordinate in the real world.

With a new appreciation and potential of how place can engage people for collective action, the officeverse may also contribute to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Drawing inspiration from Lanier, we can envision that Goal #9 (Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation) will be accelerated by redrawing the boundaries of time and place.

The rejuvenation of place is an ingredient essential to leverage office shock to create better futures for working and living. The Spectrum of Place and Time provides choices to challenge our old ideas of place and time, look for new ways of working, and harmonize our journey to the future.

Your Choices on the Spectrum of Place and Time

The officeverse will give us many more choices for offices and officing—and the choices will be much deeper than with today’s hybrid working. The officeverse will be tailor-made, and personalized.

In the officeverse, everyone who intentionally provides teams with opportunities to customize and personalize officing through the meaningful design of space and time will become office designers. The porous boundaries of personal and social experiences, individual and social cognition, and ultimately neurological input and externalized behaviors will necessitate thinking across gradients of possibility beyond the categories of past offices and officing.

As you think about your own personal story across this spectrum, consider these questions:

1. How might you illustrate your story about the Spectrum of Place and Time?

2. How will you determine what tasks or activities are best carried out together or apart through the varied officeverse media options?

3. In what way does the concept of an avatar appeal to or disturb your thinking about working in the officeverse?

4. Trust will be a critical ingredient for making virtual relationships successful. How will you seed and sustain trust?

5. How does the opportunity to design your workspace affect your comfort level in the officeverse?

6. How will you establish a sense of organizational culture and belonging in your officeverse?