Someone had to run the harvesters in the rice and sugarcane fields, check the irrigation canals or robots, install things, fix things. Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked, generation after generation; give them three thousand calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike.
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a big minority of Earth’s population did robot work, and that had never gone away, no matter what political theories said. Of the eleven billion people on Earth, at least three billion were in fear when it came to housing and feeding themselves—even with all the cheap power pouring down from space, even with the farmworlds growing and sending down a big percentage of their food. No—off in the sky they were bashing out new worlds, while on old Earth people still suffered. It never got less shocking to see it. And things aren’t fun anymore when you know that there are people starving while you play around.
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Why is it like this?” [she asked him]. “There’s never been a plan,” [he replied]. … “We’re always dealing with the crisis of the moment. And old ways die hard. Everyone on Earth could have lived at an adequate level for at least the last five centuries. We’ve had the power and resources relative to the needs, we could have done it. But that was never the project, so it’s never happened.

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

staceythinx:

Digits is a poster series by James Adame designed for a campaign to promote classroom visits by professionals that use math and science in their jobs. 

About the project:

This campaign was created for an initiative of the State of Mass. school board to show kids the importance of studying Math and Science…We wanted to show students that Math and Science isn’t scary- it makes dreams come true and surrounds us in daily life in everything we do.

••••••

I disagree with this idea.

This isn’t any different from anything they’re been doing in school for years, except it looks a little prettier.

I know this much: it wouldn’t have worked for me — I hated math in school. HATED it. Did well enough, but knew I’d almost never have to use it in my job (and I was right — I don’t). Now, years later, I’m actually doing Trig review for fun.

What happened is that I realized the inherent magic of it. By magic, I mean the math of physics, of Alan Turing, of the Golden Ratio, of the ancient Greeks! Whereas, unfortunately, the stuff above just brings the whole process down to the “kid’s level”. Kids, who love magic and superheros and pirates and fantasy and crazy shit… and they’re telling them about dull, commonplace things like bullies and… what’s up there? Wedgies? Ok, the invisibility one is pretty cool. But it isn’t real, unlike the aforementioned examples.

Let’s not be afraid to bring the wonder of the very real, mysterious world we live in into the classroom — Hell, into our daily lives.

(via freshphotons)

As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products.
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We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do — the value we create — is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.
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This sort of work isn’t so much employment as it is creative activity. Unlike Industrial Age employment, digital production can be done from the home, independently, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion without going through big corporations. We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another — all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.

Are Jobs Obsolete? ›