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{{A|book review|'''''A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond''''' by Daniel Susskind (2020) <small>Get it [https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_World_Without_Work.html? here]</small> | {{A|book review|'''''A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond''''' by Daniel Susskind (2020) <small>Get it [https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_World_Without_Work.html? here]</small> | ||
{{image|Dole-queue|jpg| | {{image|Dole-queue|jpg|Pastimes of the future, as imagined by {{author|Daniel Susskind}}}}}}Dr. Susskind, scion of the storied futurology dynasty, will doubtless find enough [[general counsel]] anxious to be seen at the technological vanguard, and suckers for sci-fi alternative histories like me, to recoup his advance, but {{br|A World Without Work}} will not signpost much less dent the immutable trajectory of modern employment. | ||
To my mind Susskind mischaracterises what work is and how humans, organisations and economies organise themselves to do it, and overlooks — neigh, ''contradicts'' — the whole geological history of technology. Technology has ''never'' destroyed employment ''overall''. Susskind thinks it will now — that ''homo sapiens'' has reached some kind of Kubrickian tipping point — but gives no good grounds I could see to support that belief. | To my mind Susskind mischaracterises what work is and how humans, organisations and economies organise themselves to do it, and overlooks — neigh, ''contradicts'' — the whole geological history of technology. Technology has ''never'' destroyed employment ''overall''. Susskind thinks it will now — that ''homo sapiens'' has reached some kind of Kubrickian tipping point — but gives no good grounds I could see to support that belief. | ||
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===Employment and Taylorism=== | ===Employment and Taylorism=== | ||
Susskind’s conception of “work” as a succession of definable, atomisable, impliedly ''dull'' tasks — a framework, of course, which suits it perfectly to adaptation by machine — is a kind of Taylorism. It is a common view in management layers of the corporate world, of course — we might almost call it a [[dogma]] — but that hardly makes a case for it. | Susskind’s conception of “work” as a succession of definable, atomisable, impliedly ''dull'' tasks — a framework, of course, which suits it perfectly to adaptation by machine — is a kind of [[Taylorism]]. It is a common view in management layers of the corporate world, of course — we might almost call it a [[dogma]] — but that hardly makes a case for it. | ||
The better response is to recognise that “definable, atomisable and dull tasks” do not define what ''is'' employment, but what it should ''not'' be. The [[JC]]’s [[third law of worker entropy]] is exactly that: [[tedium]] is a sure sign of [[waste|''waste'']] in an organisation. If your workers are bored, you have a problem. If they’re boring ''each other'',<ref>Hello, financial services!</ref> then it’s an exponential problem. | The better response is to recognise that “definable, atomisable and dull tasks” do not define what ''is'' employment, but what it should ''not'' be. The [[JC]]’s [[third law of worker entropy]] is exactly that: [[tedium]] is a sure sign of [[waste|''waste'']] in an organisation. If your workers are bored, you have a problem. If they’re boring ''each other'',<ref>Hello, financial services!</ref> then it’s an exponential problem. | ||