Hardly a week goes by without a report announcing the end of work as we know it.
In 2013, Oxford University academics Carl Frey and Michael Osborne were the first to capture this anxiety in a paper titled: “The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?”.
They concluded 47% of US jobs were threatened by automation. Since then, Frey has taken multiple opportunities to repeat his predictions of major labour market disruptions due to automation.
In the face of threats to employment, some progressive thinkers advocate jettisoning our work ethic and building a world without work.
If machines can do our work, why not reduce the working week drastically? We should be mature enough to decide what truly matters to us, without tying our identity to a job, or measuring happiness in dollars and professional status. Right?
Not quite.
Continue reading… “Work is a fundamental part of being human. Robots won’t stop us doing it”
