Op-Ed: The office was once a vital technology, but its time may be over

Medieval and early-modern workers did not have to go to work. Nor did they work from home; they just worked where they lived, or lived where they worked. Double-entry bookkeeping was invented at the end of the Middle Ages, but for centuries before the industrial age all offices were, literally, home offices; special buildings entirely and exclusively devoted to bookkeeping, paperwork, and administration—buildings where no wares were kept, and nobody slept at night—only became common over the course of…