We will all have more leisure time in the future: Difference between revisions

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 Seeing as we won’t be working [[Jacquard loom]]s, wiping arses, writing [[A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond - Book Review|wishful dystopian techno-political tracts]] or [[Change manager|managing business change programmes]] any more, ''what to do with all the spare time we’ll suddenly have?''
-Will we just loaf around, playing [[chess]] and drinking grappa, the way Mediterranean pensioners have since time immemorial?
+On this view we will just loaf around, playing [[chess]] and drinking grappa, the way Mediterranean pensioners have since time immemorial. The challenge will be staying interested. Sounds great, doesn’t it! (Best not to dwell on the thought that the [[robo-slave]] serving the grappa and wiping our arses could also wipe the floor with us at [[chess]], if it felt like it.)
-Sounds great, doesn’t it! (Best not to dwell on the thought that the [[robo-slave]] serving the grappa and wiping our arses could also wipe the floor with us at [[chess]], if it felt like it.)
+In any case: nice non-work, if you can get it.
 Now if something about this scenario nudges your implausibility hooter, that makes two of us.
-For one thing, from our [[perspective chauvinism|vantage point]], the last thirty-odd years have been one long [[Cambrian explosion]] of technology (''t’internet! iPhones! SETI@home! Uber! Drones!''), but so far ''not a sign of any extra leisure time''. Maybe it is just me, readers, but for [[JC|this old goat]] it has been quite the ''opposite'' experience.
+For one thing, from our [[perspective chauvinism|vantage point]], the last thirty-odd years have been one long [[Cambrian explosion]] of technology (''t’internet! iPhones! SETI@home! Uber! Drones!''), but so far ''not a sign of any extra leisure time''. Maybe it is just me, readers, but for [[JC|this old goat]] it has been quite the ''opposite'' experience. '
-''There is more work to do now than ''ever''.''
+Granted, a lot of it is ''crap'' work: [[internal audit]], software [[change manager|change management]], process excellence and operations analysis might not be the effervescent future we envisaged as wild undergraduate dreamers (but had our parents known, would they have told us? [[Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?]] Knowing our actual future might have crushed the very will to power within each of us, like a painted flower.)
-Granted, a lot of it is ''crap'' work: [[internal audit]], software [[change manager|change management]] and operations analytics might not be the effervescent future we envisaged as wild undergraduate dreamers — but had anyone known, would they have told us? [[Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?]] Knowing our actual future might have crushed the very will to power within each of us, like a painted flower.
+In any case, that was then: now, ''there is more work to do now than ever.'' It is here, it is overwhelming, and it is barricading the way to that chessboard in Στούπα, with no end in sight.
-In any case, that was then: now that [[book of work]] is here, it is overwhelming, and it is well and truly barricading the way to that chessboard in Στούπα.
+As for that end: ''No-one knows what we will be doing in ineffable, co-evolving future''. For all we know it ''might not'' be [[Change manager|regulatory change programme management]] — though, ahhh, don’t ''bet'' on it — but, if the past is any guide, there ''will'' be something, it ''will'' be [[tedious]], and it sure as hell ''won’t'' be slugging ''génépi'' over a backgammon board in the ''Haute-Savoie''.
-And isn’t this the point? ''No-one knows what we will be doing in ineffable, co-evolving future''.
-For all we know it ''won’t'' be [[Change manager|regulatory change programme management]] — though, ahhh, don’t ''bet'' on it — but, if the past is any guide, there ''will'' be something, it ''will'' be [[tedious]], and it sure as hell ''won’t'' be chugging ''génépi'' over a backgammon board in the ''Haute-Savoie''.
 “Ahh,” sayeth the [[digital prophet]]s of our time, “but ''is'' the past any guide? We say it is not. ''[[This time is different]]''. This time the machines will not just be our handmaidens; ''they will replace us altogether''.”
-Okay; let’s run with that for now. Even if your are right, [[thought leader]] types, your theory of [[technological unemployment]] assumes:
+Okay; let’s run with that for now. Even if you are right, [[thought leader]] types, your theory of [[technological unemployment]] assumes:
 *that all human activity in the economy can be and, before long ''will'' have been, articulated in a way that can be entirely, reliably and cheaply carried out by [[artificial intelligence]];
 *that once they have been so articulated, those activities will nonetheless hold their value and won’t become ''worthless'' overnight, as has every other artisanal craft made redundant by machinery in human history;<ref>Ask yourself: how much would you pay to deliver a first-class email? Or to get your digital photographs developed?</ref>
 *that an economy which has been thus automated to saturation, and to which human participants no longer contribute, will still function more or less as normal, and
-*that, in other words, an entire economy not only can be fully determined —  ''solved'' — but has been: that our current polity is in a fully [[Taxonomy|taxonomised]], [[Taylorism|Taylorised]] end-of-history state in which no new activities or work categories are possible, and all that do currently exist can be more effectively carried out by machine — ''they have abolished the patent office'';
+*that, in other words, an entire economy not only can be fully determined —  ''solved'' — but has been: that our current polity is in a fully [[Taxonomy|taxonomised]], [[Taylorism|Taylorised]] end-of-history state in which no new activities or work categories are possible, and all that machines can look after those that do exist.
-But the theory ''isn’t'' right. ''These assumptions are transparently absurd''. They get the [[Yngwie Malmsteen paradox]] 180° back to front. the more information processing power we have, the more complicated our information structures will be. This is because we are lazy, backward-looking creatures. Increasing automation increases [[complexity]], multiplies the interconnectivity between components of our distributed systems, accelerates the speed at which data circulates, and [[Tight coupling|tightens the couplings]] between components. The [[JC]] has been harping on about systems theory and complexity in recent times, but it is clear that [[artificial intelligence]] can’t solve complex problems. They can only make them worse.
+''These assumptions are transparently absurd''. They get the [[Yngwie Malmsteen paradox]] 180° back to front. The more information processing power we have, the more complicated our information structures will be. This is because we are lazy, backward-looking creatures. Increasing automation increases [[complexity]], multiplies the interconnectivity between components of our distributed systems, accelerates the speed at which data circulates, and [[Tight coupling|tightens the couplings]] between components. The [[JC]] has been harping on about [[systems theory]] and [[complexity]] a lot recently, but these are not trivial problems. [[Artificial intelligence]] cannot solve them. We are going to be needed for a long time yet.
-In an {{nutshell}}: put away the checkerboard and stick the ''limoncello'' back in the cupboard. There’s work to do.
+In a {{nutshell}}: put away the checkerboard and stick the ''limoncello'' back in the cupboard. There’s work to do.
 <small>''This article was written by a disembodied [[neural network]].  © 2020 Klaatu Barada Nikto''.</small>