Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
> IMO the 'why' in our development of technology is primarily guided by making money. ... We get devices that save our time, but our time isn't actually 'saved'. Instead it is given to another activity ... This seems a problem to me ... As we are able to replace more human jobs, the jobs that remain are probably going to be of a certain sort.
You might be interested in "Machinery and Modern Industry" from Marx' Capital. It's long and rambling, but, basically, he thought that in our economic system, technology would inevitably be created and deployed in a way which would decrease the value of labor while increasing the value of capital (or investment). Each time a trade is made obsolete, or its practitioners are greatly reduced in numbers, the laid-off workers end up in less-skilled, lower-paying work. If you read through all the footnotes, he even predicts this would eventually result in an economy where most of the employed would be working in an unskilled "servant" industry (service industry).