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The Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday that as more tech companies turn away from the traditional office setup, there is a new shift to holograms due to Zoom fatigue.
Brianne Kimmel, the founder of WorkLife Ventures, which focuses on the future of work technology, told the paper that employees are beginning to grow tired of “being on video all day.”
“It’s exhausting,” she said.
The paper pointed to companies like Google’s parent Alphabet and WeWork that have already implemented some new technologies in the workplace.
WeWork partnered with a hologram technology company and will use these images at 100 locations. Microsoft introduced Mesh, which is a three-dimensional image that will appear on compatible glasses.
The COVID-19 outbreak has shown many companies that workers could be just as productive (if not more) by working from home. As the U.S. eases restrictions, more companies are taking a hybrid approach to life back at the office. NPR reported that major cities still have vacant buildings.
Brookfield’s office buildings in Washington, for example, are only 14 percent occupied compared to its normal 80 percent.
Greg Meyer, the region head for Brookfield Properties, said workers at his company started coming back to the office on a rotational basis back in September. He wants everyone to come back full time after the summer.
“We’re in the office business, and so if we don’t believe in it, I don’t think we can expect anyone else to,” he told NPR. “But equally importantly, we think it’s a really important part of our success — having people work together, teach each other, learn from each other, all those things which you can’t do remotely very well.”
Andreessen Horowitz recently surveyed 226 startup companies in its portfolio and learned that 87 were considering a 1-2 day office workweek; 64 were considering skipping an office setting outright, according to TechCrunch.
TREND FORECAST: Beyond the workplace, as we have forecast, new technology will bring in a new age of virtual education that Gerald Celente, in his book Trends 2000 (Warner Books, 1997) termed “Interactive U”. Technology such as holograms and virtual reality will advance the new learning systems where students, already highly addicted to the hi-tech world, will feel as though they are in the classroom as they are learning from home.
Again, this trend was slowly developing but has rapidly advanced with the outbreak of the COVID War.
And as we have previously reported, the current education model was invented by the Germans at the onset of the Industrial Revolution to teach workers in mass production facilities how to read, write, do math…and follow orders.
With interactive education, students will be able to access the best and most accomplished experts in selected fields of study rather than the one-size-fits-all, outdated educational programming that is now the norm.
Trends are born, they grow, mature, reach old age, and die. The Industrial Age education model is dying, and the Interactive U model is still in its infancy.
Thus, the Ontrendpreneur® opportunities that seize upon its growth will provide great rewards.