Nelson Mandela freed from prison, Driving Miss Daisy receives Academy Award for Best Film, Ultimate Warrior defeats Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania VI, Hubble telescope launched, Boris Yeltsin becomes first ever elected president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Paul Gascoigne cries at World Cup, Maradona cries at World Cup, West Germany win World Cup 2 months before official reunification with East Germany, Mary Robinson becomes first female President of Ireland, Ice, Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice spends 4 weeks at Number 1, Channel Tunnel workers on both sides meet, Tim Berners-Lee creates the first webpage on the first web server, Mikhail Gorbachev wins Nobel Peace Prize and Home Alone becomes a global box office hit. The year is 1990 and people work in places like this:
In order to help me imagine what an office might look like in 2035, i thought i would look at a typical office from 1990. If i can see how much things have changed in the last 22 years, it might help me envisage how much things could realistically change in the next 23.
The most obvious difference is the technology. The room is filled with CRT monitors that look to have a depth of around 25cm, These monitors are all sitting on top of a horizontal desktop PC (complete with floppy disk drive) and all rely solely on a separate keyboard and mouse for input. You can see the GUI on one computer is black and white with the other appears to only show greyscale. There is a landline phone on the desk in the foreground and i daresay there may be others dotted around. The phone itself has no display which would make things like a digital phonebook or caller ID impossible. Given that there was no internet, and therefore no email, the landline would have been the main method of communication with the outside world. Also visible are some (very large) printers and what looks like a fax machine. Again, before email this would have been an integral part of the work done in the office.On the far left of the room you can also see incredibly large, space-filling filing cabinets being used to house paper copies of documents.
Although the office looks a bit dated, the chairs themselves wouldn’t look too out of place in 2012 - at least relative to everything else.
I originally thought some of my ideas for the future were too outlandish and unrealistic given that 2035 is only 23 years away but having seen this photo i’m beginning to rethink that stance. The things that are not in the office speak volumes about how much times have changed since then and with technology advancing exponentially, 2035’s office will be further removed from 2012 than 2012's from 1990. Another thing that i also learned is that the design of the 2035 chair will be determined by future technology and how people interact with it. The basic function of a chair will always remain the same but its design should be optimised to meet what i think will be the needs of a typical user in 2035.
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