Why A Cubicle Nation?

Some old movies depict typing pools or account departments of British businesses as soulless rooms filled with endless serried ranks of identical desks with identical worker. It reeked of conformity, repression and a lack of creativity. The mechanisation of man if you will.

But that is very much of the past, so the cubicle has always bemused me. What internal message does this archetype of North American offices send to its workers? Internal marketing is not just about keeping everyone in the loop so when will free-range workers replace the battery hens? Or am I misisng something?