Ask HN: Is voice becoming your main input? What happens to open-plan offices?
Is voice or dictation taking over as the major way of interacting with your computer or agents?
If so, then what's going to happen to the future of open floor plan offices?
Are NC headphones and Stenomasks the future?
They will now become part of the corporate issued and mandated equipment at open floor plan offices?
Open plan offices aren't going away and nothing will really change because open plan offices have long been used where lots of people spend all day talking on the phone.
Acoustic privacy is has two components. Attenuation is the obvious one. Masking is the one that's not. Controlling rather than minimizing white noise from air-conditioning is the ordinary approach by professionals.
Of course, a lot of open office designs are driven by "taste" rather than judgement informed by experience and science. So you get hard floors and hard ceilings instead of carpet and acoustic tile (it's right in the name, duh) and complaints.
In other words, it's a solved problem. Poor choices aren't.
There are microphones that can capture whispers and even subvocalization: https://youtu.be/NvVbCqDgfCs?t=520
The one demo'ed in the video is BOYA BY-GM18CU (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BF969RVP)
That one captures whispers. I've heard other devices can dictate based on vibrations from your neck/chest.
What's already happened to open-plan offices is that they are at least half empty due to remote work. People go to them to interact with coworkers as much as for a quiet space. People go specifically to be available for face to face conversation, so loud conversations are heard.
Voice isn't my main input but the handful of times I voiced something in the middle of an office, I spoke quietly, with a near whisper, into a close mic. It was much quieter than I would normally be able to speak to a coworker.
I've adopted voice as my main input, and i love it, It is much faster than text. and for your question, i do think NC headphones will become the default for open floor plan offices, or maybe microphones than captures whispers.
There's somethign very black mirror about an office floor full of people softly whispering to their computer
I can use my Macbook's microphone while my hifi system is blasting death metal at full volume. The people I'm talking to can't hear the music at all and still hear me perfectly. (The Macbook has multiple microphones in an array which can isolate the speaker from the surroundings.)
Along with noise cancelling headphones, noise canceling microphones will probably get really good.
tall, thick cubicle walls.