Ditch the cubicle

San Jose Mercury News on how Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Sun are moving away from typical office designs and into shared work spaces. In a month my company will change office locations. Better location but smaller, more cramped workspaces. The noise of shared work spaces bothers me, and while an office is a status symbol, it is also a very good way to escape the noise pollution and actually get some work done. When will there be noise shields for the cubicle farm?