the end of an era1 min read

during the twenty-first century, we are going to see the end of mass wage labour on this planet. sophisticated new technologies – software technologies, computer technologies, robotic technologies, intelligent technologies – are already beginning to replace entire job categories. […] by the mid-decades of the twenty-first century, we’re going to be able to produce goods and services for the whole world with a fraction of the workforce we have now.
the key question this raises is, what will happen to millions of human beings when we no longer need them to produce basic goods and services? we’re already seeing that there is nowhere in the world where we are not facing long-term structural unemployment. so how do we redefine what a human being is in the twenty-first century? whether consciously or unconsciously, we have become so accustomed to defining humans in terms of their productivity at the workplace that we scratch our heads when we try to think: is there something else human beings can do on earth? if you think about it, you start to see how narrowly constructed our consciousness is about ourselves.
[jeremy rifkin in wie? issue 23 spring/summer 2003]

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