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In the
1960s the odds on favourite as to what life would be like in the 21st
century could be summed up in one word: leisure. Many perfectly
sober thinkers believed that the rising tide of automation,
computerisation, robotics, efficiency, modern management techniques,
atomic power, instant communications and all that would so improve
productivity, cut the need for labour, and create so much real wealth
that people would not need to work so much. Indeed, Arthur C.
Clarke went so far as to say that technology would eliminate the 99%
of all human labour from the lowliest ditch digger to the highest
executive. Most people wouldn't need to work much,
if at all, and those who did would be restricted by law to only a few
days a week and be expected to retire by age 47. |
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But this wasn't regarded as looking forward to a
future of peace and plenty; it was regarded as a serious social
problem that had to be solved before it was too late. If by the
year 2000 only philosopher kings, sorry, scientists, would be allowed
to work full time, then the rest of the population would be left with
little to do except watch five hundred channels of television and
listen to he robot lawnmower cutting the grass.
Since, it was argued, only a small percentage of
people are able to keep themselves occupied solely by their own
devices, most people would quickly tire of crosswords, sex, and
Brockian Ultra-Cricket and they'll probably begin to sink into apathy and
decadence. That is one
reason why unemployment and the dole is so soul destroying and why
actors, who are unemployed most of the time even if they are
successful, end up becoming so bizarre and self-destructive.
Something would have to be done if the human race was to avoid being
bored to death. Some suggested a new profession of leisure
counsellors, others new drugs.
Arthur C. Clarke recommended universal education
throughout life using the latest in teaching machines, psychological
techniques, and even "consciousness-expanding" drugs. Clarke had
a very rosy view of the attractions of the classroom that many people
probably didn't share, but he felt that the key to keeping the leisure
society together was by as many people as possible working their whole
live keeping up with the sciences and earning postgraduate degree
after postgraduate degree until the world resembled a high tech
version of the College of All Souls.
Given the appalling state of real 21st
century schools and the disintegration of our universities into
reservations for leftist refugees, perhaps it's for the best that we
don't force the people back into them. But what is truly
remarkable is that the very things that people expected to produce the
leisure society prevented it from happening. Their mistake was
in thinking that productivity is a static thing and that beyond a
certain point workers will find themselves with less and less to do.
In fact, productivity can keep expanding and diversifying indefinitely
so that workers don't work less, they just produce more.
Take the simple case of this web site. If I
was doing the equivalent of what I do here back in the 1960s, say
self-publishing a small monthly magazine, I would have needed a fairly
large staff of secretaries, researchers, printers, draughtsmen,
typesetters, photographers, editors, proofreaders, salesmen,
deliverymen, and general dogsbodies to get each issue out. Now,
thanks to modern technology, I can do all of that on my lonesome.
Does that mean that I am now a man of leisure? Does it hell.
It means that I'm doing everyone else's job and I'm up until all hours
banging out copy, designing pages, editing images, tweaking code,
and... you get the idea.
Hand me any more labour saving devices and I might
have to give up sleep
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