Cubed: The Secret History of the Workplace

This is one of those books that ended up getting a good bit of press because it was a novel way of looking at something that is an everyday thing.The way that white collar workers do their work didn’t just happen that way, but it was a result of deliberate choices – from the architecture of the buildings that the work is done in to the furniture that the workers sit on. I hadn’t thought too deeply about it, thinking that the way things are was just a bit like the way things were, only with computers. I was wrong, and Saval tracks the changes, focused on the United States from the industrial revolution on. The white-collar worker has not been devoid of the standardization and alienation that the blue-collar worker had and rebelled against. The white-collar worker just never saw their white-collar chains; instead, they looked up, hoping to move up the ladder (no matter how false that metaphor is or was).The potential for striving has, writ large, been the barrier to class to recognition of the white-collar worker for generations. The lack of upward mobility except for into the white-collar ranks is what led to unionism and workers improving their lots. The myth of upward mobility in white-collar terms is a form of social control that is not readily seen.Saval tracks this, and it makes me think if this has been a deliberate move. As production has been mechanized, there are fewer production workers and more support staff in ancillary roles to production. As more workers move out of production and the workforce is more and more professionalized, white-collar membership is the mass of workers. It is the cube that keeps them apart and alienated. Maybe it is a prison of sorts. Me?I’m not part of this at all.My office has a door.

Cubed is really about people, their motivations, their successes and failures. It spends a lot of pages on why people, both men and women, wanted to become white-collar workers and how they coped with the office landscapes that organizations built for their employees. Read this book and you will never look fondly at any skyscraper of any vintage with admiration again, for in one way or another too many offices were, and too often still are, dehumanizing.Saval ranges widely. The author is well read on a large variety of subjects that are important to his overall discussion. He

If you can't stand your "Open" office space, but have never seen anything else, or alternatively, if you can't stand your "open" office space and long for some good-old-day and are wondering how we got here, you will really enjoy this book.

I'm incredibly frustrated with this book. the story the author is trying to tell has the potential to be so incredibly compelling. I love the concept of it. However, the writing is disorganized and very difficult to follow - overall fairly inaccessible to the everyday reader. It almost reads like an academic white paper at times. I feel like the author is trying too hard to sound scholarly by using flowery, excessive prose instead of communicating his POV clearly and succinctly. A single paragraph can go back and forth between his own thoughts and quotations or citations making it very difficult to follow. I gave up after 90 pages. I don't want to work this hard while reading a book for leisure.

It would have been desirable if the book was better illustrated. The content however, is very interesting.

A good history of a subject that I would not have originally thought would be so interesting. It is more than just about the office cubicle. It is about the history of office work, city architecture, labor relations, changing business structure and much more. If like me you have spent much of your working career in an office cubicle, you will find much to relate to.

Heard an interview of Nikil Saval on 7th Avenue Project and knew I HAD to check this book out—I was NOT disappointed. It's a fascinating accounting on the evolution of the office, its design, and the varied influences (social, economic, etc.) that cross-pollinated to get where we are today. Excellent treatment, especially on design elements and open-concept (open-source) workspace. Kudos!

Interesting read. Not sure if its disheartening or comforting to know that all the complaints I have about working in a cubicle have been the same complaints people have had for 100 years.

After reading this whole book I'm now looking with historical understanding whenever I'm in an office. Excellent therapeutic effect. This started after the first chapters.

Very interesting to bring the perspective of how the office has evolved in the USA over the past 100 years or so. It is limited in it's scope geographically, but the social commentary is on point. The office environment is home to many many people and has not lived up to the hype of elevating workers to new heights, nor the promise of better working conditions. But, as the "poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." (Robert Wright), the office worker sees him(her)self as a temporarily delayed executive.

The title of the book implies that it will be focussed mostly on the history of the office and office furniture. Instead, the book offers a much broader treatment of the history of office work in general. This makes the book very readable and entertaining.

Hmm, I'm not sure what to make of this one. It "explains" the genesis of the office, which is quite a fuzzy concept to begin with, so it doesn't really know what to do with itself until office buildings start coming into play around the turn of the 20th century. It takes all sorts of faintly interesting diversions along the way, but it's not just very interesting, maybe it's the subject, maybe it's the writing style, it's just a bit bland.

While filled with a wealth of information, I feel like this book largely failed to live up to its promise - It is less about the history of the workplace and more a social/historical commentary loosely tied together with the office as its theme.Instead of exploring the design and history of how offices used to function, we are largely treated with information about the social political settings at the time. I feel like there exist much better and nuanced books on the various stages of America - and make no mistakes, while proclaiming it to be a history of the office, it largely glosses over parallel developments in other parts of the world.If you are interested in how the office came to be, I'd suggest you look elsewhere.