# The Office of Tomorrow By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2024-04-07 In post-World War Two America, there were different types of presentations related to the “office of tomorrow.” These could be seen in everything from product advertisements to children’s cartoons. Whereas some of the gadgets now seem outlandish, collectively, these forecasts show an optimism about the future. Things would, and very soon, be easier and better. Progress was assured. These advancements were not presented as being reserved for the rich and the powerful. They were to be our shared reward. Progress was going to smile on everybody. The future would be clean, exciting, and fun. Looking at those dated predictions from some seventy years later, one can almost feel a spark of hope about the future. Through advancements, it would be possible for work to become less tedious, more rewarding, and shorter in duration so that our society would be safer, healthier, and more prosperous. Many of the predictions related to technology, like computers that fit on a desk or televisions one can wear as a watch, have long ago been achieved. The social benefits derived from these technological advancements seem completely absent. Is this why there is no longer much focus given to the office of tomorrow? Maybe enough evidence has been assembled that we have collectively concluded that technological advances and social benefits occur on largely separate paths. Maybe our collective focus has paradoxically been reduced to only the individual. If all one cares about is oneself, there is little interest as to what advancements might mean for anybody else. A group of individuals can be an aggregation without being a society. There was a time when the rich were not obscenely so, when the social safety net offered to the poor was offered less begrudgingly, and when most of society was united in a prosperous middle class. Perhaps it is not coincidental that it was also that time when there was collective hope in progress and the office of tomorrow. Effort to make things better only makes sense if one has hope that it can be so. Without such hope, the office of tomorrow will likely remain a place of drudgery for the many and obscene opulence for the few. #### Related Items [[Work]] [[Office]] [[Technology]] [[Society]] [[Future]] [[Focus]] [[Class]]