Technological change is speeding up all the time, but will we ever achieve the long-promised paperless office?

'Hi, it's me. I'm going to be late. I've got a Telex to send. I know, I'm sorry. But we're getting this fax machine next week, so things are going to get better."

Technology promised to liberate us. For those of us who dabbled with Telex machines, carbon papers and Roneos in our early office lives, we may also remember some of the following predictions that have been made over the last 20 years. One day, we were led to believe that the office would be paperless, we'd all work from home, robots would do the jobs we didn't like doing, and we'd all have lots of leisure time.

In the 70s, offices were, on the whole, fairly drab. Hours were regimented, you knew where you were. Managers liked to keep an eye on their workforce, you never know what people will get up to if you give them too much freedom. Today, with pension duping, Enron-esque conduct and sacking by text, workers no longer trust the organisations they work for.

Hiring and firing has become the norm, but will the lack of talent - and with the no-nonsense, self-confident backpacker generation arriving in the workplace - mean that employees start to call the shots?

What does the future hold for our offices and is there much to look forward to? The following forecasters and workplace experts have shared their predictions with Office Hours for the next five, 10, 15 years and beyond. This is what we can expect in:

Five years' time

No, we won't all be working from home. At least, not all the time. "Where do you get the soul food of the water-cooler conversation?" asks Marian Salzman, chief strategy officer for Euro RSCG Worldwide, and author of Buzz, a marketing trends guide.

But Natasha Hawtrey-Woore of Bea Space Couture, the interior creatives, predicts that more home space will be dedicated to work space, so that we have the choice to work at home when we want to. "The old study will be reborn as a 'commercial creativity zone'," she says. And the water cooler? "There will be direct video links to office and other commercial creativity zones," she predicts.

Co-sharing, rather than hot-desking, is the way forward, believes Ken Mackay, director of MAK Architects. "It's about doubling the density," he explains. Large communal desks will be big. MAK is designing new offices for ad agency Mother in a TriBeCa-style warehouse on Brick Lane in London, where 250 people will share one desk - "although the desk may spread over three floors," says Mackay.

Andy Law, author of Experiment at Work, is launching his new business, Boy Meets Girl, in September. Law founded St Lukes, an ad agency which took hotdesking to the nth degree - workers kept their stuff in kitbags and were almost forbidden from heading towards the same desk. But when he left, 50% of the workers were still roaming while the other 50% were defiantly "nesting" - pinning up photos of pets and hunkering down.

How will things be at Boy Meets Girl? "There'll be one floor of hurly-burly activity, rather like a timber yard with banging and crashing. On another floor there'll be a thinking, calm, Zen-like space." And no, you won't be allowed to make one desk your own.

10 years' time

Currently there is no loyalty on either side - employer or worker. But the longer-term effects of treating employees shoddily will create a crisis for businesses. Talent will disappear. In order to attract talent, employers will have to woo workers, then fight hard to keep them.

Jeremy Myerson, professor of design studies, co-director of the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre at the Royal College of Art and co-author of The 21st Century Office, predicts that the only reason for going to an office will be to meet other people. "The office will be a townscape or social landscape." WH Smith will provide urban office spaces, while John Menzies will provide suburban offices. Myerson points to motorway service stations that are already doing just this. And why not? Vittorio Radice has great plans to transform M&S - why shouldn't office space be part of that? You could have mini chocolate steamed puddings on tap.

At the same time, organisations will brand their workplaces, something Myerson calls "The Narrative Office". "The office will have a point of view, it will seek to interpret what the organisation is about," he says. Toyota has already done this. The office has an interior street and materials of the building reflect the materials of a car. Communicating brand values to employees will be ubiquitous.

Traditional office real estate will begin to change. "Businesses won't lock themselves into 25-year leases," says Myerson. Swanky serviced buildings in cities will be offices during the week and hotels at weekends. "It won't be Blade Runner, but it'll be a case of head office buildings being used during their downtime," says Mackay.

"You don't accept bad service from a hotel, so why accept it from your employer?" asks Mackay. "It'll soon be the responsibility of the company to deal with accommodation as well as healthcare." And healthcare will extend greatly to emotional well-being, believes Marian Salzman. In terms of job opportunities, one of the biggest growth areas is mental health, because 40% of all people in work will have a mental health problem, predicts Peter Cochrane, former futurologist for BT. Andy Law predicts "the inexorable rise of the posh proletariat" with 21st century plumbing organisations being the norm. "We're going back to the age of craftsmen and builders," he says. The church will get more and more out of touch and less able to attract new customer bases. Meanwhile, your plumber will do house calls, offer pastoral care, earn much more than you do, and always be in demand.

Workplaces will have to be open - and this has nothing to do with the layout, Salzman believes. Transparency and knowing what your employer stands for will be vital. "I think people will choose an employer based on politics," she says. "It'll be a case of 'I'm liberal so I want to work for a liberal employer'." This attitude will extend to details such as expecting halal food to be served in the corporate cafeteria. Corporate social responsibility will continue to grow - the predictions made in the book Good Business are already happening.

The workplace was a safe sanctuary when jobs were for life. Now that organisations are far less dependable, people have fallen back on other sources of security: social networks based on friendship and shared values (and these relationships build within organisations but don't necessarily reflect the views of the organisation). William Davies, of the Work Foundation, is currently researching a report on the future of work and says that "people carry their pensions around with them between jobs and they carry their professional networks around between jobs. As long as you hang on to your Outlook address book, economic insecurity is off-set by a new form of social security."

Marian Salzman believes that we'll revert to formal dress in the workplace. Short-sleeved shirts in the summer and dress down Fridays are a case of "too much information". So dust off those power suits, ladies.

Sam Rowe of Watkins Gray International, architects and interior designers, will be speaking on "working without boundaries" at the Workplace exhibition at Excel in London later this year. She is confident that there will no longer be any discrimination in terms of accessibility. "Anybody with any disability will be able to work in the workplace." All modern buildings will be accessible for wheelchair use and given the increase in "grey power", technology that will help failing hearing and eyesight will also be available.

15 years' time

New buildings will have green roofs and will recycle grey water. Ken Mackay points to a building in the Elephant and Castle where there are trees sprouting out of every few floors.

Flexible working may be big news now, but it'll take another 15 years before it's truly the norm, according to Stephen Jupp, flexible working consultant (new-ways-of-working.co.uk). "There's still a huge amount of traditionalism," he says. The downturn in the economy has made people stick to what they know. "There'll be more of it when there's an upsurge," says Jupp.

By this time, hopefully we'll have disciplined our technology and we won't be such slaves to email, mobiles, laptops and PDAs. But we'll still work hard and long is the universal word on the office block. And there'll be many who are terminally unemployed, according to Marian Salzman. "The high end will do very well, but the low end will suffer."

20 years' time

Mondeo Man is adept at working on the move, but in the future, cars will be electronically steered so the driver will find it even easier to be a road warrior. Car interiors will be designed to allow people to use them as mobile offices. At Design Triangle, Cambridge, the transport design specialists predict that car interiors will be designed so that they are easily transformed into office spaces. Swivelling the seats around to create a meeting room for four will be commonplace.

But we're also going to be working until we literally drop. "In 2020, half the adult population will be over 50," says Jeremy Myerson. We won't have pensions. We'll be fit and spry. At the same time, Marian Salzman believes that plastic surgery will be de facto and that the greys will be popping out to Boots at lunchtime for a quick Botox hit. "50 might be the new 60 but you will need to look young," she says.

Cashiers will be replaced by RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tagging which will also automate entire logistic chains. "A whole bunch of work will go away," says Peter Cochrane.

And beyond . . .

Finally, work generally will become increasingly wireless, computers and technology will become lighter and convergence issues will be sorted. Sadly, however, offices will still be stacked to the gunnels with paper.