The real lesson is that there is no silver bullet. No matter what {office layout, technology} you choose, there's going to be upsides and downsides. There's no

The real lesson is that there is no silver bullet. No matter what {office layout, technology} you choose, there's going to be upsides and downsides. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. We had a backlash against separate offices for a reason, and we're having the same sort of backlash now (and will likely have plenty more in the future.) It's the price paid for what often seems like blind fad-following; rather than analyzing whether X really makes sense given the attributes of the organization (people/culture, type of work, department, etc.), it's adopted, used, and eventually, revolted against. A more thoughtful, situation-specific analysis might produce better results.