On a personal level, I’m asking myself what the show calls my industry out on, and what we’re prepared to change to make work better.

Severance, though brilliant, is probably not going to be the wake up call it could be.

Yet our future – like our past – could yet be subtly moved by this force. From Star Trek to Sesame Street, there’s a deep track record of TV shows influencing the the kind of society we aim for.

The latest episode where the team go on their Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence (ORTBO; I’ll let you solve that 😉), pokes fun at the sticking plaster our industry can often be, and the future we’re ill prepared for.

The show strikes a brilliant balance where everyone can be empathised with, on their own terms, despite their role in the sinister goings on that leave ‘innies’ in the dark over their true selves.

There’s a burn reserved for us occupational psychologists and performance culture designers (ahem).

Everyone gets a subtle ribbing: disembodied and distant owners, survivalist managers, and leaders and employees trapped between self preservation and a genuine search for truth (who they really are).

And this is felt as ‘disprientation’ in work and social life. It could also be the reason we seem so divided:

It can compress space & time in production and consumption, but guess what, it’s your space + time:

Capitalism has a trick:

Schrodinger’s laundry