New Delhi, Aug. 17 -- For all the boardroom certainty about getting everyone back to the office, the office is a recent invention. Modern humans have existed for 300,000 years; the purpose-built office is barely 300, the first being London's Old Admiralty in 1726. For most of human history, nobody went to the office to earn a living.

Yet the office is now in retreat. Global attendance sits roughly 30% below pre-pandemic levels, and companies are shrinking their footprints. Three forces explain why this is structural, and not just a passing phase.

First, technology has removed the reason to commute. People once came in because the expensive machinery lived there-in the late 1960s, a single photocopy could cost a quarter. Today a home dev...