Read in paperback.
Notes
Pin 📌 I have more notes on this related to the doomed AI in art writing project, add here.
Workers holding back innovation
…for most of history, the politics of progress were such that the ruling classes had little to gain and much to lose from the introduction of labor-replacing technology. They rightly feared that angry workers might rebel against the government. In the seventeenth century, for example, the craft guilds had become a force of growing political power in Europe, and they vehemently
resisted technologies that threatened their livelihoods. [p. xii]
The leisure society that never came
…an average American worker in 2015 who merely wishes to maintain the average income level of 1915 could do so by working just seventeen weeks per year, aided by modern technology. But most citizens do not find this trade-off desirable. Instead, their demand for new goods and services has risen along with productivity. As labor-saving technology has given us the means to do more with less, most of us have preferred to take on other productive tasks instead of opting for more leisure. [p. 335]