Good point.
Whenever this topic comes up I wonder why would a business risk de-valuing one of its biggest investments (payroll) by creating a potentially productivity killing environment. But if programming is now considered a cost centre (like clerks were in their day), I wonder what would be considered the profit centre of a software company?
Why should they care if it means that the software devs in a completely different part of the business are now less productive? Most large organisations are so dysfunctional that the negatively impacted parts of the business can't fight back against bean counters from elsewhere.
This is playing out at my work right now with virtual desktops being imposed on all developers, even though it means that projects that used to take 1 min to compile now often take 15 mins to compile. Crazy.
What changed is that IT operations became a bigger thing, and we started needing more programmers. The traditional cubicle created the illusion of a private space, but made IT ops hard because you couldn't see anybody.
Now open offices are back. Wifi is displacing many of the managed cabling requirements, and people are into the feeling of "energy" that comes with a newsroom like environment.
If you look around you and see a big open room of people futzing around with headphones -- take the hint. You're the clerk of the 2010's.