Post-work society
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In futurology, political science, and science fiction, a post-work society is a society in which the nature of work has been radically transformed and traditional employment has largely become obsolete due to technological progress.[1]
Some post-work theorists imagine the complete automation of all jobs, or at least the takeover of all monotonous, rule-based, predictable and repetitive (and thus unworthy of humans) tasks in the future by ultimately cheaper, faster, more efficient, more reliable and more accurate intelligent machines.[2][3] Additionally, these machines can work in harsher conditions and for longer periods of time without stopping than humans,[4] which is expected to eventually lead to massive economic growth, despite high rates of ever-increasing human unemployment.[5] Overall, this development would lead to an enormous increase in prosperity, whereby it would be the task of politics to distribute this wealth evenly within the population.[6][7]
Other theories of a post-work society focus more on challenging the priority of the work ethic, and on the celebration of nonwork activities.[8]
Near-term practical proposals closely associated with post-work theory include the implementation of a universal basic income,[9] as well as the reduction of the length of a working day and the number of days of a working week. Increased focus on what post-work society would look like has been driven by reports such as one that states 47% of jobs in the United States could be automated.[10] Because of increasing automation and the low price of maintaining an automated workforce compared to one dependent on human labor, it has been suggested that post-work societies would also be ones of post-scarcity.[11][12]
Literature
[edit]- Kathi Weeks: The problem with work: feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics and postwork imaginaries, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8223-5112-2
- Daniel Susskind: WORLD WITHOUT WORK: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, 2020, ISBN 9781250173515
See also
[edit]- Critique of work
- Four-day workweek
- In Praise of Idleness
- Humans Need Not Apply
- Imagination age
- Post-capitalism
- Refusal of work
- Tang ping ("lying flat")
- Technological utopianism
- Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work
- The End of Work
- The Future of Work and Death
- Workism
References
[edit]- ^ Frayne, David. "Towards a Post-Work Society". No. 2. ROAR Magazine.
- ^ Lynskey, Dorian (2020-01-09). "A World Without Work by Daniel Susskind review – should we be delighted or terrified?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-04-05.
- ^ Ox, Audit (2023-07-27). "Chat GPT Creator Sam Altman Says Jobs Will Go Away Because of AI, It Will Not Just Be a Supplement…". Medium. Retrieved 2024-03-20.
- ^ Beckett, Andy (19 January 2018). "Post-work: the radical idea of a world without jobs". The Guardian. Retrieved 2018-09-15.
- ^ Lu, Yiwen (2023-06-14). "Generative A.I. Can Add $4.4 Trillion in Value to Global Economy, Study Says". New York Times.
- ^ "How AI Could Make Everyone Rich". Lifewire. Retrieved 2024-03-21.
- ^ Clifford, Catherine (2021-03-17). "OpenAI's Sam Altman: Artificial Intelligence will generate enough wealth to pay each adult $13,500 a year". CNBC. Retrieved 2024-03-21.
- ^ Thompson, Derek (2015-06-23). "A World Without Work". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2022-10-25.
- ^ "What Will We All Do in a Post-Work Society?". Treehugger. 2021-02-12. Retrieved 2022-10-23.
- ^ Frey, Carl Benedikt; Osborne, Michael (13 April 2018). "Automation and the future of work – understanding the numbers". Oxford Martin School. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
- ^ Wolla, Scott A. (1 January 2018). "Will Robots Take Our Jobs?". Economic Research - St. Louis Fed. Retrieved 2 May 2019.
- ^ "Traditional employment is becoming obsolete". www.futuretimeline.net. Retrieved 2021-08-27.