Work For Why
Tags: 3D Printing, Tech, Work

Work For Why

There was a study done at Oxford back in 2013 about the future of work. They reasoned (based on studies of automation, AI, profitability, etc.) that, within twenty years or so, forty-five percent of jobs will no longer need humans to do them , and that we might create two or three percent new jobs. Including jobs that, in the past, would normally have been considered absolutely requiring a human being, such as legal research or driving a taxi. The sheer volume of labor that is not going to be outsourced, but de-human-ized, is kind of insane.

Way back in the sixties, a Congressional committee met and determined that by the year 2000, most people would only have to work somewhere between 24 and 32 hours to do the jobs they do now, and for the same basic salary they made when they were working a forty-hour week. Instead, they pay us the same salary for triple the amount of work (really, a LOT more work, but it’ll sound like hyperbole). Fax machines, overnight delivery, e-mail, all of this was to enable Americans to have more leisure time to enjoy with their families.

Stop laughing.

Now we have 3D printers, so that you can print a replacement battery back of your remote (instead of throwing it away), or, in the case of certain Chinese construction firms, whole houses. 3D printers will allow for more rapid creation of new things, parts of things, or parts of human things (like hip replacements). What we don’t have yet (but it’s something that is being worked on, and bets are pretty much 50–50 that we’ll have one of these figured out in the next fifty years) are 3D replicators. Where 3D printers require specific raw materials to be loaded in order to create anything (glass, plastic or metal), 3D replicators require non-specific materials, and may eventually be able to replicate by pulling sufficient molecules out of the air. And what’s the first thing you make with a replicator?

Why, another replicator, of course.

So this will lead to… what, exactly?

No idea. Figure I should get that out right away. I’m not a prognosticator of human behavior. But you’re goofy if you think things can continue the way they’ve been going. We’ll have machines that will allow anyone to have whatever inanimate object they want, by asking for it (within reason, of course... maybe…).

The way things work now, we create more efficient systems, which creates greater profit for the folks that own the systems, but not necessarily an improvement for the folks that work with the systems. We can give our kids the best educations, get ’em through college, and they find themselves to be more and more interchangeable. Our economy is currently based on the idea that human beings are essential, but unimportant. Can you imagine what could happen if we’re neither?

I’m figuring this:

With apologies to George Miller

Or this:

The likelihood of the former is probably higher. As a species, we’ve demonstrated our ability to look big problems in the face, and shrug. There might be a political revolution where everyone gets together and tries to work for the good of humanity, but we’ve got a lot of work to do internally, before we allow ourselves to imagine a world better than the one we have, that works for everyone.

You’ve seen the ads where the guy leaves work on time as a symbol of his rebellious nature? It’s a car ad, of course, you’re buying a consumer product that’s manufactured in the hundreds of thousands to show what a maverick you are. Leaving on time is not an act of rebellion, folks — it’s simply one sign of an intelligent person. Working a fifty or sixty hour work week is not just unhealthy, it’s unproductive and stupid. Hell, working a forty hour week is merely capitulating to an early industrialist’s vision of an “efficient” society — 1/3 work, 1/3 sleep, 1/3 family. Surely we could come up with something better, over a century later?

Maybe all of that is wrong. We are a massively productive society. There is a huge amount of wealth in the system. Human beings are supposed to be more important than capital, more important than businesses, more important than machines. We need all of these things to have a society, but I think we’ve forgotten the part where the human being is first, and everything else follows from that.

While I’m not trying to provide answers here, I do think we have to start asking the questions.