Enter or exit your cubicle and a name plaque automatically indicates whether you are in or out. Your ID card has a chip embedded to adjust your office temperature the way you always like it. Know who has been looking for you when you log onto your computer. Not interested, press a button to indicate that you continue to be busy. These are but a few of the examples of BlueSpace, a product collaboration between IBM and Steelcase introduced today. Hoping to make office furniture dynamic rather than inanimate, the one-size-fits-all cubicle will come to an end. Full of “gee whiz” features, this is a prototype of what will be a commercial version next year.
See "A vision of the office of the future", Claudia H Deutsch, The New York Times, January 14, 2002