Dr. David Rempel, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on this issue, in the Journal of Occupational and Environment Medicine. Quote: “Well-meaning safety professionals and some office furniture manufacturers are pushing sit-stand workstations as a way of improving cardiovascular health — but there is no scientific evidence to support this recommendation.”

Robert H. Shmerling, MD, Faculty Editor of Harvard Health Publishing writes that the caloric impact of standing versus sitting amounts to a difference of 8 calories (basically, one carrot) per hour, whereas walking burns an additional 190 calories. Of course, counting calories is not everything. But it is a crude measurement of activity. Dr. Shmerling also writes: “For most of these potential benefits, rigorous studies of standing desks have not yet been performed. So, the real health impact of a standing desk is not certain.”

The problem is not that people don’t want to be active and that they “need” an electronic desk to force them in to standing and sitting. The problem is that work culture now demands people to spend every working minute behind a computer screen when actual physical activity on a break (remember breaks?) would be much better for their health. Standing desks only serve to reinforce a work culture that tethers people to technology. This “haunted” standing desk takes it yet a step further (no pun intended). As a worker, you are tethered to your computer all day and now you no longer have a choice over a primary function of your own body: whether to sit or stand.

When we allow technology to make personal choices for us, we lose our own ability to make those choices for ourselves and, even worse, those choices lose their meaning.