Workplace 2020—By Susan PaynterIt's a summer morning in the year 2020 and not yet 7: 30 a.

Workplace 2020

—By Susan Paynter

It's a summer morning in the year 2020 and not yet 7: 30 a.m. Jane Han son, flushed from her early morning run along the river, sets down in her work station at home. She is still in her sweats, and this is the first day all week she has slid her knees under a desk.

For Jane and millions of other so-called knowledge workers, the job is wherever she is. Today, it's at home. A graphics designer, Jane has a current assignment to develop a new logo for a sports shoe for a client. She's delight ed to have the project, since it gives her a chance to work with Aki, her in ternational partner inYokohama (横滨), Japan. Today, Aki's face pops up on her computer screen as she checks "see-mail," a type of communication that replaced E-mail a few years ago. With a click, Jane can call up the video image and voice of each person who left her a message the previous night.

This morning, Jane calls Aki back and they see and hear each other via video phone. They collaborate on an interactive screen almost as if they are standing side by side at the same drawing board.

Jane's husband, George, can often be found working at home as well. "Going to the office" has become an option, not a necessity, with the advent of the wireless computer. George teaches at a nearby university, and often broadcasts his lectures via satellite. But this morning he is at an on-campus seminar. The kids are also out of the house today attending classes at a nearby language and science lab. Jane is grateful to have the house to herself today as she and Aki work on the logo.

The Virtual Office

Twenty years from now, as many as 25 million Americans—nearly 20 percent of the workforce—will stretch the boundaries between home and work far beyond the lines drawn now. Technology has already so accelerated the pace of change in the workplace that few futurists are willing to predict hard numbers. But nearly all trend-trackers agree that much of the next century's work will be decentralized, done at home or in satellite offices on a schedule tailored to fit worker's lives and the needs of their families. Even international boundaries may blur as the economy goes truly global.

Between 1990 and 1998, telecommuting doubled from about 3 percent to 6 percent of the working population—or about 8.2 million people. The numbers are expected to double again in far less time, with as much as 12 percent of the population telecommuting by the year 2005, says Charlie Grantham, director of the Institute for the Study of Distributed Work in Windsor, California.

Wireless computers and seamless communications systems are already in the works and fueling the trend. The video phone is not far off, an advance that many futurists believe will make even more companies comfortable with employees working from home. "Now, we communicate at the level of radio," says Gerald Celente, author of Trends 2000 and director of The Trends Research Institute of Rhinebeck, New York. E-mail and the telephone are primitive, he argues, and make people feel cut off from co-workers. But once everyone can see each other on the screen, long-distance relationships will feel more intimate.

What about the office？ "Today's offices are a direct descendant of the factory," says Gil Gordon, a consultant based in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, who has spent nearly two decades advising companies on how to institute telecommuting and more flexible work patterns. "They may be better lighted, but they're much the same."

Still, Gordon does not think the office building will vanish altogether. Rather, the office of 2020 will be just one place

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