flâneur

Our Servants Will Do That For Us

borretti.me · 1,408 words · saved by 1 readers

Why the post-scarcity utopia is unlikely.

The implicit promise of modernity is: we have to work really hard for a few centuries, but eventually we’ll get to the Star Trek future where we’ve automated all the drudgery, and all work is meaningful, heroic, and dignifies the spirit. We will be artists, scholars, captains of the starship Enterprise, etc. There’s a few problems with this idea: “Drudgery” and “meaningful work” are in the same complexity class, so the technology to automates the former also automates the latter. Our revealed preference seems to be that we prefer solipsistic convenience over human relationships. The rest…

saved by

related reading