Martyn Rhisiart Jones and Alexei Steel

Madrid and London, 10th May 2026

Alright, citizens! Gather ’round, because I’ve been standing in the queue at the local organic laundromat in Tufnell Park, and I’ve had an epiphany. I was looking at a discarded copy of The Posh Spreadsheet Quarterly, and there he was. The man, the myth, the human megaphone for corporate mediocrity: Bernie Bumper-Book.

Now, for those of you who haven’t had the “pleasure,” Bernie Bumper-Book is what we call a “Futurist.” Which is a job title that roughly translates to: “I get paid fifty grand a day to tell CEOs that water is wet, but I call it ‘Liquid Synergy H2O 2.0’.” He’s written more books than I’ve had hot dinners, and I’ve had a lot of hot dinners, mostly involving veggie sausages and a deep sense of existential dread.

Bernie is the king of the Grand Delusion. He’s the man who looks at a toaster and sees a “Disruptive Breakfast Interface.” But if you look back at his track record, his “prophecies” have about the same hit rate as a blindfolded donkey playing darts in a hurricane.

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1. The Great Data Delusion of 2014

Back in the mid-tens, Bernie was obsessed with something he called “Massive Information-Stuff”. He told us that by 2020, “Massive Information-Stuff” would solve everything. He predicted that companies would know what you wanted to buy before you even knew you were hungry.

“The algorithms will be so precise,” Bernie whispered into the ears of every middle-manager in a grey suit, “that waste will be a thing of the past!”

Well, look at us now, Bernie! I spend half my life clicking “I am not a robot” on websites just to buy a pair of sensible socks, and the other half being followed around the internet by an advert for a lawnmower I already bought three years ago. The “Information-Stuff” didn’t make the world efficient; it just made it more annoying. It’s like having a stalker who isn’t even good at stalking.

2. The Metaverse: Living in a Digital Shed

Then came the “Virtual Pub-Space” craze. Bernie was all over it. He predicted we’d all be conducting our board meetings as 3D avatars with no legs, floating in a digital void. He told the world that the “Virtual Pub-Space” was the future of human interaction.

I’ll tell you what, citizens: I don’t want to meet my boss in a digital void while dressed as a giant penguin. I want to meet my boss in a damp office so I can at least steal his stapler as a small act of proletarian defiance! Bernie’s “prophecy” was that we’d all be buying digital real estate. How’s that working out? People spent millions of actual, hard-earned pounds on “digital land” next to a virtual mansion owned by Snoop Doggy-Dog-Pound, and now that “land” is worth less than a soggy Greggs pasty.

3. The Death of the Meat-Space Shop

Bernie’s been predicting the “Total Collapse of the Physical Shop” since the invention of the wheel. He told us that by 2022, high streets would be nothing but ghost towns inhabited by delivery drones.

Well, I went for a walk yesterday, and do you know what I saw? People! In shops! Touching things! Buying things! The drone delivery future turned out to be a bit of a damp squib because, turns out, people actually quite like leaving their houses so they don’t have to look at their families for twenty minutes. Bernie’s “frictionless commerce” ignored the most important friction of all: the fact that humans are awkward, sweaty, and like to browse the clearance rack at the Co-op.

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4. The “Invisible Ledger” (The Crypto-Cringe)

Oh, the “Invisible Ledger”! Bernie was a massive fan of the decentralised magic beans. He told us that this technology would “democratise finance” and “revolutionise trust.”

What actually happened? A load of blokes in hoodies called Sammy Scammed-You-Fast stole everyone’s money to buy a private island shaped like a Bitcoin. The “Invisible Ledger” didn’t revolutionise trust; it just proved that if you tell a capitalist there’s a new way to gamble without the government looking, they’ll jump off a cliff with their pockets full of lead. Bernie was right there, cheering them on from the cliff edge with a PowerPoint presentation.

5. The Chatter-Box 3000 (AI)

And now we have his latest grift: The Chatter-Box 3000. Bernie’s current “prophecy” is that AI will replace everyone from brain surgeons to the woman who does the announcements at Euston station. He claims it’s “The Fourth Industrial Thingy-Ma-Bob.”

But have you talked to a Chatter-Box lately? I asked one to write a poem about the struggle of the working class, and it gave me a rhyming couplet about “optimising workflows” and “leveraging human capital.” It’s not an intelligence, Bernie! It’s just a very fast parrot that’s read too many LinkedIn posts!

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How Do We Defeat the Bullshit?

The problem with the Bernie Bumper-Books of the world is that they suffer from The Duality of the Gamekeeper. They claim to be objective “judges” of the future, but they’re actually “poachers”, selling the very shovels for the gold rush they’ve invented in their own heads.

To defeat this kind of “Futurist” depravity, we need to return to the “I-Thou” relationship. Not “I-Data-Point” or “I-Target-Demographic.” We need to stop listening to people who view human life as a series of “disruptive trends” and start listening to the person sitting next to us on the 73 bus.

Closing Thoughts: The future isn’t a “Massive Information-Stuff” algorithm, and it isn’t a digital shed in the Metaverse. The future is just a bunch of people trying to get by while avoid the “prophecies” of men in expensive spectacles.

Bernie Bumper-Book will keep predicting. He’ll keep being wrong. And the bourgeoisie will keep paying him for it, because they’re terrified that if they stop looking at his charts, they might have to look at the mess they’ve actually made of the world.

Tell you what, citizens… I’m going for a pint. A real one. In a real glass. With no “Invisible Ledger” in sight.

STAY RADICAL.