The History And Future Of Work

Roughly seven thousand years ago mankind shifted from it’s hunter-gatherer way of living to that of working the land. It is likely that the ‘gatherers’ were some of the first to realise plants would grow from seed and began to plant them, meaning that there would be guaranteed food rather than requiring that members of a community go and hunt or gather. It also helped that the world was exiting the Plasticeone era and into the Neogene, early man now lived in a world a lot more hotter and wetter than it’s ancestors had. With the certainty of food brought more time for people to specialise in pottery or weaving, both of which became more useful for growing and storing crops. And so marks the beginning of work that has more or less remained unchanged up until the Industrial Revolution.

It is deemed one of the highest virtues in our society to engage in work, either paid or voluntary, though with people looking for favourably on the former as doing something for free is seen of as reckless and ignorant. On the flip side, working hard is seen as more virtuous than being paid a lot. People will often boast about the time they might have to get up at or the shifts they cover but not as much what they get paid. Normal reactions to those who say they work hard are often a raised eyebrow, a look of concern or a story about how they work harder. It is recommended that everyone work forty hours a week, following on from the concept of the eight hour day, with the remainder for rest and play, yet society is slowly realising that there are too few hours in a week for everyone to work. Similar to the housing bubble, we are quite deep into a ‘work bubble’, though rather than rising house prices and fewer properties we have excess people available to work and hours in a week. One only needs to walk around the streets during the day and wonder what everyone is doing not at work. “I haven’t worked a job for six years, it’s the government’s fault.” is often a snappy comeback, yet the fault actually lies with the implementation of the production line by Henry Ford in 1913.

Production lines had been in place since the 19th century, yet it was the end product, an affordable motor car, that had the biggest impact on Western society in a more subtle way than changing entire landscapes through road construction, pollution from oil or the millions of automobile fatalities. It set into motion a series of events that shifted work away from humans and more towards automation. The term ‘Luddite’ is used now to mean more someone against technological change, yet its roots are with workers against technological unemployment. By destroying the machines which had replaced them the early Luddites were preconceiving a world where the work that they carried out could also be carried out by machines, but cheaper. The only reason why every job isn’t done by machines is that it would be too expensive to invent the robot which could do the job as well. To hire a person on minimum wage to work at a fast food restaurant is easier, at the moment, than the research and development of a robot to do it. Things such as customer services over the internet or self-service checkouts are preludes to absolution automation (as seen in many factories), though with the trend of technological advancement I don’t think its too forward to think that by the end of the century any job will be able to be done by a robot.

Though this leaves us in an awkward area. If all the robots have all the jobs, what are people meant to do with their time? They won’t be earning money as they don’t have any jobs and so won’t be able to do anything. Meanwhile all the robots will be fabulously wealthy and spend a lot of their time on luxury boats. Nobody will even own the robots as that is a job that can be fulfilled by a robot. Which brings us back to the beginning. People will spend their time hunting and gathering, sheltering in caves and painting crude symbols on the walls. The robots will leave the planet after removing every trace of their existence in the search for more work to do. As has happened at least twice before.


IF MAN IS DECIDED WORK AND MACHINE CAN DO IT WHICH IS MORE MAN?

W = M/R

Maybe if we all worked twenty hour days in sweatshops and practised the lost art of Christian Socialism that'd get this world back on track! Moreman tomatoes grown by real agricultural humans! Milk from cows rather than a lactoseless chud made from recycled oestrogen! Broken lightbulbs laid into sandwiches on a truck heading to the conference of 'droid 'twerk. Most likely rip out the brains of humans and put them in robobodies as that's cheaper than a platinum computer. Measure the distance taken between the higher primate and the consciousness of a water bear, panspermicide, tattooed wooden bones, six million dollar running shoe, will England still be able to play Euromillions if it leaves the EU, does the empty blackness of the self ejaculate an ego, do the bleeding mouths of the Great Barrier Reef taste the motes of atom bomb, do the roars of the dinosaurs echo around the world for as long as their is air, maybe, maybe distribute wealth, maybe wait for a malthusian disaster, maybe believe in God because it's more fun.