It reminds me of Kurt Vonneguts “Player Piano” where workers want to smash the machines for taking their jobs. It’s not the machines, it’s the people who they work for and benefit who are holding us all back from building Utopia.
If a factory replaces 100 workers with robots it doesn’t necessarily make any less widgets. Just keep paying everyone and take turns monitoring, repairing, and rebooting the robot when it breaks.
In a world where technology can fully satisfy the needs of humanity, there is no need for human production of anything but art. We should share in this as equals, not as oligarchs and the unwanted extras on whose backs it was all built.
It reminds me of Kurt Vonneguts “Player Piano” where workers want to smash the machines for taking their jobs. It’s not the machines, it’s the people who they work for and benefit who are holding us all back from building Utopia.
If a factory replaces 100 workers with robots it doesn’t necessarily make any less widgets. Just keep paying everyone and take turns monitoring, repairing, and rebooting the robot when it breaks.
In a world where technology can fully satisfy the needs of humanity, there is no need for human production of anything but art. We should share in this as equals, not as oligarchs and the unwanted extras on whose backs it was all built.
Manna is a short story describing the dystopia or (unlikely) utopia we’re headed towards very well.