Oh what the hell, while we're on the subject of work

[kortirion_among_the_trees]

I find the conjunction of this, dating from the year I was born:

(In particular the lines: 'We've got a machine can learn the knack / Of doing your job, so don't come back ... Watch out for the man with the silicon chip')

With this: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/john-lanchester/the-robots-are-coming (to be read in full)

Utterly fascinating.  MacColl as a prophet of the socio-economic consequences of 'machine learning' (!!) - who'd have thunk it?

P. S. It's also just occurred to me that the LRB is the only present-day equivalent in this country of a 19th c. толстый журнал.

Comments

[arda-unmarred.livejournal.com]

Yes, and the whole point of Victorian socialist utopias was to 'take back control' - so that, to put it crudely, the machines do everything that humans don't want to, and humans have leisure time to do what is truly meaningful. The fact that the productivity gains resulting from automation are turned into profit for the few (and unemployed misery for the many) rather than distributed to make life better for everyone is, according to this view, essentially a political choice.