Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 08, 2024

That’s about right.

When some future archeologists unearth a typical modern home and comes to the bedroom closet, they will conclude that men were bipedal and women were centipedial.

The remains of an Indian computer repair scam room!!!

Forget Indian, I’ve worked in a Silicon Valley cubicle set up just like this

A dude came to my house today on one of those things that you stand on and it just goes, nothing to hold onto. Told me he could fix my lawn, cannot fix a lawn that grows in sand!! Can’t even water it! Just resilient green weeds. I am 9 miles out into the woods and his next road to sell on is nothing but potholes. Wish him well

At a guess, by archaeological standards, they may only have to dig down another two or three feet down to discover a room housing a 1960/70s IBM main frame computer run by computer cards?

At UCLA in the 1960’s, that computer was in a building of its own, kept in the low 60’s day and night so it wouldn’t overheat, and you had to walk your boxes of punch cards over to it. This “prison” looks like it would have a much newer model (at least tape drives, and probably better than that).

My first job out of university was working tech support for a major telecommunications firm. (I won’t say which one, but their initials were AT&T.) I was part of a training class of 24 people. I lasted ten months, and all but one of that class quit before I did. We called the manager “the Ferengi”.

And they had Spectrum Internet…

Almost all of the above comments are about “ancient” computers, but have nothing to do with the cartoon itself.

Meanwhile, unless archaeologists undergo considerable changes between now and “then”, they will almost certainly assign some “religious” significance to everything they find.

In the early 2000’s I worked in the ad design department of a big city newspaper. One day they redid the floor plan for the editorial department and it looked just like this. I walked in and made the comment, “Wow! It’s looking really Dilbert in here!” I got a few dirty looks!

First experience with computers was punch cards programming in Cobalt.

Many of us liked the high cubicle walls for the privacy.

I’ve been on a few archaeological digs in the Middle East. If you don’t know what something is you label it, “cultic object.” as we gather more information on ancient societies fewer “cultic objects” are being found. But, this is important, if you have several interpretations of what a building might be you must include one exciting theory. When you have a press day (to encourage funding for the continuation of the dig) the exciting theory (particularly if you can mention the word Bible) will be the only one the reporters will hear & report. That will be the one the media reports (without mentioning the seven other theories). And some idiot from a flat earth church will proclaim it proves every word of the Bible literally true!

Pew boxes (common before centrally-heated churches) for worship of the internet gods?

“This might have something to do with that ancient text we dug up, ‘1984’. This must be from a later time when people had their own individual telescreens to feed them propaganda!”

Looks like 43 years of my life, with no windows. Now in retirement I crave daylight, opening all the blinds in our house.

Does this mean that some time into the future, they/someone will (be able to) successfully “destroy” recorded history and erase most of the evidence that these situations ever existed and that today’s events ever happened?

Those cubicles really held up over the centuries.

Wouldn’t the cubicles (cells) be filled with CRT monitors? Styrofoam coffee cups? Wide Dot Matrix printers? Floppy disks… that flop? (Well, droop)

there’s a british tv show you can catch on you tube called ‘time team’ where they do archeology . I find it interesting how they can recreate an idea of an entire bron ze age community, but i also find it sad, what was a place where people lived and loved and worked to make a life and they are completely forgotten, all their work nothing but a few ripples in the ground.

Appropriate it’s buried underground. This was pretty much my Hell on earth for much of my working life.

Just a typical cube farm. Nothing to see here.

Next will be the cairns containing bodies of people who are still holding cell phones in their hands.

So archeologists and other related scientists have lost the ability to read/play ancient videos/dvds? (The Office would be useful here).

I’ve never been sure whether I hated the cubicle cells or the “open bay” organization in the work place. The cells at least provided some privacy and one didn’t have to watch an office mate pick his teeth or apply athletes’ foot medicine during the lunch hour [we had no lunch room and only 1/2 hour so people tended to eat their lunch at their desks a lot].

And there was always the etiquette problems in the open bay: What do you do if you overhear incorrect information regarding a project you are not involved with? Particularly if that information is “classified” or “need to know”? Do you try to correct it immediately; wait until the speaker is done, take him aside and explain the error; or, stay silent.

I live near Yellowstone, just far enough away to know the eruption is coming (if it ever does). If it happens, I intend to strike a pose that will confuse future archaeologists.

I was in one of those for just over 26 yrs…..made my escape and never looked back!

I wonder if any of those ancient computers have PacMan on them?

Who knows, maybe in a thousand years it’ll be worth something.

Well, he’s not wrong.

Looks like Wiley took a page right out of Michener’s The Source. Excellent read

Cubicales R Us memorial plot.

It was actually an experiment by the ruling class, to determine just how much the could demean the serfs in their quest to maximize exploitation of serf talent and labor. It also functioned quite well as incubator and exchange point for every communicable disease imaginable, occasionally even STDs, and was responsible for many local epidemics. According to one serf whose account I read, he labored in one for 20 years, before threat of a global pandemic forced an end to the experiment, in the belief the disease exchange effect could result in such large losses that the system would break; in any case, advances in technology had already it made it possible to demean and exploit the serfs in the same (as well as new and interesting) without the serfs ever leaving their own hovels.

Worked in a newspaper office once in the 70’s, instead of punch cards we had punch tape. To this day I have zero idea why they went with tape or if it was a universal to newspapers thing. You could not tell if you made a mistake, you had to run the entire 20 ft tape and print it out to ‘read’ the code. Then try to figure out where the mistake was on the tape.

That’s what it was, all right.

Probably a movie set because there are no skeletons wearing headsets. :)

Exactly. Cubicles are the worst. I found it next to impossible to work with all the noise from others and it was difficult to be on the phone without being overheard, which was quite stifling. An extreme extrovert must have designed this type of office layout.

As good a description as any, yeah the gold old days !

Cube farm..

Modern tech workers miss our cubes. Cramped, yes, but unless your boss was a real jerk, you could hang things on the wall, decorate a bit, and it shut out a fair bit of distraction. Modern open office layouts are a million times worse. RIP, my cubicle, 2006-2017.

Only thing worse is when they take down the cubicle walls and you have an “open office”, which is defined as a place where you have no privacy and are forced to listen to the conversations of every one of your office mates in their Team meetings, and when you are in your own Team meeting no one can hear what you are saying because of all the background noise.

You mean torture room don’t you?

I love the way “the Future” is depicted with hover boards.

Close enough.

The cubicles here do look like a type of prison though.

Where’s the company cafeteria?