The book is set in the 21st century so it's not too much further ahead but it's easy to just assume that things went slightly differently after the Cold War like I think the Cold War still happened. There's this memo that goes around about whether or not people in the office are going to keep bringing their own toilet paper or not and then the boss of the office has like a rubric because in the computer system you can tell how long everyone spent reading this memo. If you read it for less than 10 minutes it's time for an employee count conference and possible attitude counseling for 10 to 14 minutes keep an eye on this employee may be developing slip shot attitude14 to 15.61