I don't think it's particularly bad for them, especially in the short term. In my extended family it's common to use red light therapy, which penetrates into the tissues to help the fight against inflammations, infections. It's also used as a treatment for dry eyes, which I also have. I may be wrong though, maybe common sunlight is more harmful with a translucent skin? Idk, it's interesting though.
My previous workplace had meetings like that. On my current project we just gather around on Skype from our workstation if we need to collaborate digitally.
I believe developers should have a powerful workstation and a small laptop which is able to remote into the workstation.
Pair programming can be done through Slack or Skype (highlight the screen when you want to pinpoint something - it's easier than pointing to the monitor)
Although this setup doesn't solve the remote work issue as remote control protocols can be pretty slow or plainly unusable with a slow internet connection.
I think a lot of us needs to think about how fortunate we are working ona field that is our passion and not standing in a pile of shit and sweat all day long. Having open offices that makes communication easier means that you could communicate your need for no distruption or talk with your mates who are loafing around and brainstorm about future problems. If you have the brain capacity to focus on ambient noises, then I guess you are not focusing enough and just whining about your current situation instead of doing what matters. I've seen workers who couldn't hear anything since they were too immersed. I myself use earphones when I want to get into it and close out the entire world. If you think that it's a real issue and don't see the value of savings and closeness to each other, then maybe it's time to quit your current workplace.
And I think that it works exactly like Aardvark did. Strange stuff. I don't think that this could be useful, since hard questions will be unanswered, and easy questions shouldn't be handled by humans either. So I guess this kind of application shouldn't be really used, and instead we would need large, compact databases, where we can store and query quality knowledge.
Good suggestion. I was thinking the same, so I started working on something, but it's still pretty basic. Communication should be easy, just as speaking.
