The Jetsons might have had it right - Fowler's (not that one) Dev BlogThe Jetsons might have had it right<br>Posted on Aug 10, 2026

George woke up. He felt it before his eyes opened. The grit of his tongue stuck<br>to the roof of his mouth, the feeling of that layer of grime on his teeth, he&rsquo;d<br>been drinking again last night. Now comes the headache. Still with his eyes closed<br>he braces for that familiar constant bitter hum of disapproval from his brain,<br>starved for water. The eyes open now, harsh bright light is too much shock for<br>his body to take just yet, he closes them again, and rolls over - he knows he<br>can get away with sleeping in another half an hour.<br>He knows it&rsquo;s trite, but the thought of work makes him tremble. Reporting into<br>work, sitting in front of that giant screen, he doesn&rsquo;t have any friends at<br>work, everyone prefers to work from home, they don&rsquo;t want to make the effort to<br>befriend anyone. The loneliness at times makes him feel like crying, but then<br>he remembers that his role is to be the strong one, to feed his family and<br>not need friends, not need any acquaintance other than his wife and children,<br>they should be wholly fulfilling. At least that&rsquo;s what Dude Dad on TikTok says.<br>Spacely makes sprockets, they need to make sprockets at an astounding rate.<br>Early on in the company, the bottleneck was manufacturing. Now, abundance has<br>dissolved the moat of the skilled worker. Securityvisors watched the machines,<br>and occasionally helped when they got stuck, or when luddites attacked, but<br>now the bottleneck was in the hearts and minds of the populace - they<br>truly didn&rsquo;t know how many sprockets they needed, and the role of Spacely&rsquo;s<br>was to invent ways to inform them how many sprockets they needed (and just<br>a hint, it was directly correlated to the balance the bank would lend them)<br>So Spacely devised a new program. This system would invent new companies at<br>a rate of thousands per day, researching minute-by-minute flash trends<br>on social media and attaching the value of sprockets to social wants through<br>astroturfing via millions of AI accounts. It would simultaneously lobby local,<br>provincial, and federal governments for amenable laws to the production of<br>sprockets out of the material du jour (or minute, as the trend may dictate).<br>It would research and phish executives at friendly companies to procure<br>large deals for sprockets at bulk rates, all valued on a surge pricing model<br>that ensured maximal value to Spacely. And it would start rumour mills<br>(again via the astroturfing accounts) about competitor sprockets, diminishing<br>their value, exposing bad behaviour by executives, and doxing them when<br>necessary to redirect popular discontent against the sprocket industry.<br>George&rsquo;s terminal was fabulous, it was the best in ergonomics that money could<br>buy. The screen was an immaculate representation of pixels, blending reality<br>with the digital information in front of him. His chair had the best neck support,<br>his benefit program had regular massages where he could relieve the stress that<br>built up in him from the terror of his work, up to five times per year. It was<br>an enviable position from his peers&rsquo; vantage. The money came in, he could support<br>his wife and daughter&rsquo;s spending habits, he had time off to play ball with his<br>son, and even time to walk the dog.<br>Work though&mldr; work made him sweat cold. They had long given up on him examining<br>the details of individual companies in their approval to operate. His conscience<br>was a bottleneck they couldn&rsquo;t afford. So he now reviewed them in batches<br>of hundreds at a time. His job was to push a button. His job was to understand<br>what all of those shell companies would do with their directives, understand it,<br>extrapolate where they might go with it, and push the button to accept responsibility<br>for their actions.<br>George pushed the button.<br>He went home and drank.