work and technology

[arethinn]

Comment I made to this post by heron61:

The 40-hour work-week sucks - and I should be glad I'm working only that and that no more can be demanded of me without compensation in time-and-a-half or equivalent money. I remember reading a utopian "what if" by Isaac Asimov once where he envisioned that the increasing use of technology to do work (manufacturing, food production, service industries being the three major ones) would mean that humans would eventually have to do almost no work at all, and we would turn into a leisure- and arts-based society.

This is all wonderful and good if it does happen (I would certainly like to see it - maybe then the aliens would initiate open contact since we'd finally grown up, lol), but it seems to me to be a chance balanced on a razor's edge. Right now increasing use of technology to do work seems to be putting people into poverty or at least financial struggle, because everything else isn't structured to support the transition to leisure. Also it seems to depend on the basic goodness of people, kind of like libertarianism, and we know how that is. :-/

As you say [said in this other post], I think it does kind of boil down to advancement or collapse... but I think the way things are currently structured, collapse is almost inevitable. There has to be a more fundamental consciousness-type change...

Comments

[helen99.livejournal.com]

What I've found with most employers is that if technology improves the the efficiency and speed of the work process, then the employer piles on more work to fill the 8 hours. Far be it from them to give up that kind of profit. If they were allowed more than 8 hours, they'd use it.

This reminds me of a shopping center I go to at lunch. It was unique in that instead of just cement, it has pretty garden patches bordering the sidewalks. Yesterday I found out that the owners of the site plan to rip the gardens out and build more parking spaces. Why? For the few extra dollars the stores might make by placing parking spaces closer to the stores. The same applies to a lot of open spaces, every inch of which is being developed without any thought for anything but the bottom line. Likewise, every bit of time freed up by technology is looked at as a resource to be used in other ways - not as an opportunity to be free.

Unwilling to give up even a few dollars, minutes, or square feet of cement for the sake of aesthetics, creativity, freedom, etc., I don't think the current system will ever even approach a mindset of trying to free the population. Also, the basic religious and social training about the evils of "an idle mind" are very ingrained, so the population isn't even trying to be free, most of the time.

I'm not exactly sure what the answer is - there must be one, though. I can't see this being the natural order of things.

[soundwave106.livejournal.com]

The Dilbert answer to employer's desire to fill up 8 hours of time, is that Mother Nature has compensated for employer's demands of more, often Useless work by inventing things that appear to be work, but really aren't. Such as telecommuting and the Internet. :)