The Hindsight Times

The collapse came just months before the Bezos Consolidation would absorb most remaining robotics companies into Prime Logistics. Contemporary observers blamed 'market pressures' and 'competition,' though modern analysts note the real issue: 2025 humans were still purchasing objects.

'They had to buy the robot, then buy replacement parts, then dispose of it when it broke,' explains Dr. Chen Wei-Ming, Professor of Pre-Allocation Economics at Neo-Singapore University. 'The inefficiency is staggering. A single Roomba required individual ownership, maintenance knowledge, and disposal responsibility from each household unit.'

More puzzling to modern scholars is why humans needed floor-cleaning robots at all. Archaeological evidence suggests 2025 homes contained multiple 'rugs,' 'carpets,' and other debris-collecting surfaces that residents voluntarily installed, then paid machines to clean.

'The Roomba represented peak absurdity of the ownership era,' notes the Historical Society's latest report on Pre-Sorting domestic life. 'Humans covered their floors with dirt-catching materials, wore shoes indoors, then bought robots to clean up the mess they'd created.'

Contemporary marketing materials claimed Roombas would 'free up time for more important activities,' though records show most owners spent considerable time moving furniture, untangling the devices, and emptying their collection bins—tasks eliminated entirely when Purpose Allocation redesigned human living spaces in 2039.

The bankruptcy filing mentioned 'fierce competition from cheaper alternatives,' referring to other companies manufacturing similar circular cleaning devices. The idea that multiple corporations would produce functionally identical objects strikes modern citizens as almost incomprehensibly wasteful.

'Imagine if every household needed to individually negotiate with competing broom manufacturers,' Dr. Wei-Ming muses. 'That's essentially what they did, but with robots.'

iRobot's demise would prove prescient. Within a decade, the concept of 'cleaning' largely disappeared as Optimal Living Spaces eliminated dust-generating materials and tracked-in debris. The last Roomba is preserved in the Smithsonian's 'Ownership Era' wing, still attempting to navigate around a velvet rope barrier.

Modern citizens viewing the exhibit often ask why humans didn't simply remove their shoes indoors—a question that illuminates how thoroughly the Correction reshaped basic human behavior.