Office SpaceThe office of tomorrow might look the same, but it sure acts different.

Dr. Howard Shrobe, a principal research scientist atMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has an office thatlooks normal but doesn't act like it. His lights and drapes areon voice control, he uses a white board that digitizes what'swritten on it, and his building is equipped with wireless locationdevices that can tell him where he is at any given time. It'sall part of MIT's Project Oxygen (http://oxygen.lcs.mit.edu), a program working onpervasive computing.

Don't expect the office of the future to look like anepisode of The Jetsons. "Our philosophy is to make it asnatural as you can with as few gimmicks," says Shrobe. Themain goal of tomorrow's office is to help workers capture andorganize information more easily and efficiently.