As several people have pointed out, the idea that work could end for a large proportion of human society has been around for a very long time. But might it really? Let’s think about it.
Technological development has probably always been a two stage process. The first stage involved finding a solution to a technical problem. An example is the invention of the steam engine, which had to be invented because horse driven pumps could not remove water from mines quickly enough as their depth increased. Once this technical problem had been solved, engineers recognized the enormous potential which steam had for displacing labour, both horse and human, in other fields. Enter the second stage, in which the application of steam power in many different industries enabled both cost reductions in producing given outputs and a huge expansion of the product of given inputs. And, of course, the steam engine required fuel, which led to a tremendous expansion of the fossil fuel industry, coal at first but then also oil. The point is that steam power not only displaced work and changed the nature of work, it led to a large variety of different kinds of work which, ultimately employed far more people than were originally displaced. It also brought about large-scale social change, with country folk flocking to cities to work in the satanic steam powered mills.
A little later, because people wanted carriages to be horseless, a source of power smaller, lighter and more powerful than the steam engine was needed. Enter the internal combustion engine, which not only made the horseless carriage a reality, but also led to the need for vast systems of roads, a whole new way of building cities, and a very different distribution of population, all of which generated an enormous amount of work. And, of course, it also led to powered flight. (I’m not suggesting that the internal combustion engine was invented specifically for the automobile. It was probably around before that, though perhaps waiting for a purpose in the shadows of steam.)
The microchip is another example. The initial problem may have been something like computational power for military purposes during the early stages of cold war. Or perhaps there was some earlier need, though probably still military. In any event, the solution, initially, was to build huge machines which used vacuum tubes, and to hire and train enormous numbers of women as key-punch operators. Clearly, this would not do. As the potential power of the computer was recognized, some solution other than replicating costly mechanical behemoths had to be found. Enter the microchip and progressively smaller and more powerful versions of the little machine I’m using now, which can do far more work than the godzillas now on display at museums. Enter too a huge diversity of applications and a whole new industry centered around these. During a period of only some four decades, the computer has evolved from the single purpose of computation for the military to a very large variety of purposes. This says something both about human ingenuity and about work not quite ending when some futurists think it might perhaps begin to do so.
Solving a problem and then proliferating that solution into a large variety of uses is one side of the coin. There is another. This is that the applications of a particular invention eventually run out. There were, ultimately, only so many uses for the steam engine. Society would at that point have wrung all of the additional product it could out of the machine. All it could then do is replace worn out machines with new ones, or add essentially similar machines to the existing stock as population grew and demand increased. One wonders if there really is much more we can do with the internal combustion engine. And while it is certain that we are still some decades away from having wrung everything we could from the microchip, there are already signs that some of the things we are applying it too are downright silly and add nothing to human health, wealth or happiness.
The important question for the future of work is where we go from here. What is the next big problem? The exploration of space? Feeding the hungry? Living with climate change? Resolving disputes peacefully? The depletion of energy resources? All of these? I would suggest there will be no end of work.
Ed Weick
(Pssst! Anyone wanna buy a nuclear powered wristwatch? I sell ‘em cheap. How about some diluted water? Good to drink. Guaranteed!)
