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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> | ||
[[File:Dole-queue.jpg|450px|thumb|center|Passtimes of the future, as imagined by {{author|Daniel Susskind}}]]}} | [[File:Dole-queue.jpg|450px|thumb|center|Passtimes 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. | ||
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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All innovations create unexpected [[diversity]] or opportunity — that’s more or less the definition of “innovation” — and all deliver more subsidiary [[complexity]] & inefficiency as a by-product. Both — the opportunities ''and'' the inefficiencies — “need” human midwifery, to exploit them (for the former) and effectively manage them (for the latter). | All innovations create unexpected [[diversity]] or opportunity — that’s more or less the definition of “innovation” — and all deliver more subsidiary [[complexity]] & inefficiency as a by-product. Both — the opportunities ''and'' the inefficiencies — “need” human midwifery, to exploit them (for the former) and effectively manage them (for the latter). | ||
Nothing that the information revolution has yet thrown up suggests any of that has changed. The more [[technology]] is deployed, the more the fog of confusion and [[complexity]] — as in [[complexity theory]], and not just [[complicated]]ness — engulfs us. | Nothing that the [[information revolution]] has yet thrown up suggests any of that has changed. The more [[technology]] is deployed, the more the fog of confusion and [[complexity]] — as in [[complexity theory]], and not just [[complicated]]ness — engulfs us. | ||
An excellent counterpoint, though equally flawed in other ways, is the late {{author|David Graeber}}’s highly provocative {{Br|Bullshit Jobs: A Theory}}, which has a far more realistic, if no less glum, prognosis: soul-destroying jobs aren’t going away: they are only going to get worse. And there will be more and more of them. This feels more plausible to me. | An excellent counterpoint, though equally flawed in other ways, is the late {{author|David Graeber}}’s highly provocative {{Br|Bullshit Jobs: A Theory}}, which has a far more realistic, if no less glum, prognosis: soul-destroying jobs aren’t going away: they are only going to get worse. And there will be more and more of them. This feels more plausible to me. | ||