Automation and Future of Jobs

• In 1885, socialist William Morris proposed that in the factories of the future, employees should work only four hours a day.
• In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that advances in technology would lead to an age of leisure where people might work 15 hours a week.
• Since the early 2010s, these ideas have been developed further, creating a growing critique of work as an ideology, and exploring alternatives to work.
• Post-work offers enormous promises: In a life of much less work, life would be calmer, more equal, more communal, more pleasurable, more thoughtful, more politically engaged, more fulfilled.

The work ideology is not natural nor very old.

• Before the modern era, all cultures thought of work as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
• Once the modern work ethic was established, working patterns started to shift. Between 1800 and 1900, the average working week shrank from 80 hours to 60 hours, and in the 1970s to roughly 40 hours.
• In 1979, Bernard Lefkowitz related in his book that people who had given up their jobs reported feelings of "wholeness." During the same period, because wages were high enough, it became possible for most people to work less.
• During the 80s, work ideology was reimposed by aggressively pro-business governments who were motivated by a desire for social control.
• By the early 21st century, the work culture seems inescapable.