The Dilbert Future

Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century


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Review by Alden Mudge

What hath Scott Adams wrought?

With the publication of "The Dilbert Future" this month, Adams will have at least three books atop the nation's bestseller lists. Two of them, "The Dilbert Principle" and "Dogbert's [Top Secret] Management Handbook" are found in the Business rather than the Humor section of my local library -- an early sign of the oddly exulted place Dilbert occupies in our culture.

Adams' popular daily comic strips flap bravely like small flags of independence in corporate cubicles and washrooms across the land. And my recent unscientific survey of 27 of the participants in a festive rite of male passage turned up three middle managers who thought the Dilbert books and comic strips accurately reflected the idiotic behavior of corporate management (present company excepted, of course); a therapist who appreciated Dilbert's wit (in a mild and distant sort of way); one independent contractor who had never heard of Dilbert; four computer engineers who were certain co-workers had recently e-mailed Adams the details of their companies' particular forms of lunacy; and 18 others who exclaimed, "Dilbert? I live Dilbert!"

Clearly Adams is on to something. Or, as he writes in "The Dilbert Future," "I have successfully leveraged my incompetence into a better job." Of course if this be incompetence, then it is incompetence of such magnificence (why, it is even marketed on the Internet!) that it deserves the name "phenomenon."

the Dilbert
future
is a place
in which
stupidity
reigns
supreme
The exact nature of that phenomenon, however, is best left unexamined. The pleasure of reading Adams' books is similar to scratching an itch on the tender skin at the edge of a healing wound: scratch gently and the sensation is exquisite; scratch too hard and there is only pain. The orangey glow in the eyes of some who claim Dilbert as their own suggests pain and workplace violence. To think too deeply on any of this is to miss the wicked, exuberant, in-your-face humor that is Adams' main appeal.

It's that loopy appeal that's evident in "The Dilbert Future," wherein Adams gazes deeply into his whirling screen saver and aims his trademark satirical dissection gear at an ever-receding target. "The future," he writes, "is an excellent topic for any author. By the time you realize I was wrong about everything I predicted, I will be dead."

His subjects range from the future of voting ("In the future, voters will be so baffled that they'll want smart people with bad hair to tell them what to do"), to "social stuff" like poverty, crime and pet services, to things that will NOT improve in the future (bicycle seats and airline travel top his list). And these predictions are not mere assertions but are supported by almost-logical commentary of Adams' own fabrication, by strange-but true anecdotes sent to him in the more than 350 e-mail messages he receives (and apparently reads) daily, or, best of all, by the slanted accuracy of his daily cartoon panels. Quod erat demonstrandum, pal.

Not surprisingly, the Dilbert future is a place in which stupidity reigns supreme. Strangely enough, some features of that future are not so different from the present. There is, for example, the rise of "confusopolies," which Adams defines as "a group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price." According to Adams, telephone, mortgage and insurance companies are already pointing to a bright new corporate future in which "confusion is the most important competitive asset." He can hardly wait for the deregulation of the electric utilities.

Fortunately, Adams also predicts a future in which the reign of stupidity is counterpoised by the triumph of the nerd. While management will push technology to enhance worker productivity, for example, market forces will "create technology for helping workers goof off without detection. There's a bigger market for that. Look at the numbers. For every boss who wants to make you work harder, there are dozens of employees who want to prevent it."

The best news for nerds is the future of sex. According to Adams, "in the future, computer-using men will be the sexiest males." It's a simple matter of Darwinism. "We're attracted to people who have the best ability to thrive and survive." And in the Dilbert future the best are those who "can install their own Ethernet card without confessing their inadequacies to a disgruntled tech support person."

Ah, such rosy optimism! Such bright promise! Is this perhaps the key to the Dilbert phenomenon? The explanation for why Adams' books buck trends and sell so well among men? The message is hopeful and clear: Yea, though they walk through the valley of stupidity, incompetence, and greed, in the end (i.e., the Dilbert future) Nerds shall inherit the Earth.

Alden Mudge lives and writes in Oakland, California.

©1997, ProMotion, inc.

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