It is worth remembering, to put some perspective on things, that it has always been said that the rise of machines and technology would lead to unemployment and our lives denuded of meaning. Right back to the cottage weavers and the coming of factories, the advent of tractors and end of ploughing by horses. Thus it is famously reported that a manager was survey part of a production line and bragging at the wage-saving efficiency, ‘look, you can’t see a single person’, to which the person to whom he said it replies, ‘no, and I can’t see any customers either’. And then there were the labour-saving devices trumpeted after the Second World War, washing machines, vacuums, freeing up time for other things, raising the question of how you fill it. But both of the dangers, loss of ways to earn living and loss of meaning and purpose in one’s life, never in fact seem to happen. The flaw in that, by analogy, Malthusian way of looking at things, is that both always get replaced by something else, and of course the anxiety that they won’t be is down to the fundamental truth that we can’t know future knowledge. We look blankly into the future and are filled with anxiety, which may more may not be justified, but is here summoned up not by knowledge of actual things that will happen, but by a vertiginous void. A matter not of fearing the tiger lurking around the next corner, but of our imagination and not knowing what is round the next corner.
Leisure can be boring. Too much leisure stifles creativity and transforms human beings into self-indulgent slugs. Of course, on another side, it leaves more time for thought. Philosophy might flourish in a more leisure world. Technological unemployment is further sign of complexity, which I have critiqued, likening it to a figurative 'black hole' (scarequotes, optional) that subsumes everything within its' sphere of influence. Certainly, there will be other comments about this topic. I truly hope so.
It is worth remembering, to put some perspective on things, that it has always been said that the rise of machines and technology would lead to unemployment and our lives denuded of meaning. Right back to the cottage weavers and the coming of factories, the advent of tractors and end of ploughing by horses. Thus it is famously reported that a manager was survey part of a production line and bragging at the wage-saving efficiency, ‘look, you can’t see a single person’, to which the person to whom he said it replies, ‘no, and I can’t see any customers either’. And then there were the labour-saving devices trumpeted after the Second World War, washing machines, vacuums, freeing up time for other things, raising the question of how you fill it. But both of the dangers, loss of ways to earn living and loss of meaning and purpose in one’s life, never in fact seem to happen. The flaw in that, by analogy, Malthusian way of looking at things, is that both always get replaced by something else, and of course the anxiety that they won’t be is down to the fundamental truth that we can’t know future knowledge. We look blankly into the future and are filled with anxiety, which may more may not be justified, but is here summoned up not by knowledge of actual things that will happen, but by a vertiginous void. A matter not of fearing the tiger lurking around the next corner, but of our imagination and not knowing what is round the next corner.
Leisure can be boring. Too much leisure stifles creativity and transforms human beings into self-indulgent slugs. Of course, on another side, it leaves more time for thought. Philosophy might flourish in a more leisure world. Technological unemployment is further sign of complexity, which I have critiqued, likening it to a figurative 'black hole' (scarequotes, optional) that subsumes everything within its' sphere of influence. Certainly, there will be other comments about this topic. I truly hope so.