Comment by mssundaram

I dunno, “it doesn't have to be that way” is very contextual. I think the peak group coherence and idea integration available in physical proximity is probably considerably above the peak available with current-day telecommunications (and current-day social/psychological technologies/practices surrounding it). But of course most groups won't be able to reach either peak, and the peaks for particular individuals or groups may be reversed from that, or there may be other factors that reverse them. (For instance, being able to more legibly put effort into communication practices with the excuse of “we need to relearn to work together because remote”, even if doing the same thing while in proximity would have had even better effects—and not necessarily because of external pressure, since the same emotive mechanic can operate within the group.)

One of the complaints about remote work at my company that I keep hearing (and also feel myself) is that our staff miss having "random" conversations. I quote random, because it isn't about the literal randomness, but kind of closer to "unstructured and unintended" conversations. We run an ideation-to-prototype event at the company and currently the teams are struggling with ideation that used to happen in such a "random" manner rather easily in person.