Labor Day 2040: "Mommy, What's a Job?"

by GRAY SCOTT

It’s Labor Day 2040. Tears of joy stream down a woman’s face. Her child looks up at her with curiosity. Standing in her automated kitchen, she begins to explain to her five-year-old son that today is Labor Day, a day of celebration of human freedom from work. She tells her son about how lucky he is that he will never need to have a job.

The boy looks at his mother and asks, “Mommy, what’s a job?” His mother explains that her parents once sat for eight hours each day, typing on a keyboard in a cubicle. The child asks, “What’s a keyboard?” but before the woman can answer the home care TeslaATON humanoid robot arrives to assist the boy in his personal morning hygiene. The ATON unit waves a waterless Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation wand around the boy and prints out his dissolvable jumpsuit. He is ready for another day of virtual reality coding, nanobot games and digital avatar MARS exploration. The mother wipes her face and finishes eating her 3D-printed nutrient-rich salmon squares. It is gonna be a great day.

This story may sound like science fiction, but many futurists, myself included, believe that this is the future in which we will soon live. We are about to enter the age of what I call abundant ubiquitous automation (AUA). We are becoming algorithmic gods. We have found the digital g-spot for human survival and a possible bridge to utopia.

[easyazon_image add_to_cart=”default” align=”left” asin=”B00F8KZKR0″ cloaking=”default” height=”471″ localization=”default” locale=”US” nofollow=”default” new_window=”yes” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Jc7ROZ2HL.jpg” tag=”seriou03-20″ width=”500″]

Automation is putting the control over our basic survival back into our hands, not the hands of Wall Street, governments and bankers. If I can use my [easyazon_link asin=”B00BFZOVGI” locale=”US” new_window=”default” nofollow=”default” tag=”seriou03-20″ add_to_cart=”default” cloaking=”default” localization=”default” popups=”default”] 3D Printer[/easyazon_link] to print another 3D printer, then all bets are off. If I can 3D print a personal service robot to help me build my home, make my clothes, cook my food and walk my dog, then how much money do I really need? Could we see a near future filled with 10 hour work weeks?

Imagine a world filled with automation robots that self replicate. These automated robots will mine near earth astroids and send back humanoid robot workers to help us do the work that is dangerous and dreary here on Earth.

It’s 2014 and we already write code for robots that make our pizzas and serve our beer. We have codes and machines right now that can write news articles, scan our faces for diseases, drive us to work at Google, vacuum our homes and separate our ores. Automation is the future. Are you ready?

September 1, 2014 By Gray Scott

About the author

Gray Scott is founder and editorial director of SERIOUS WONDER.com. He is a futurist philosopher, speaker, writer and artist. Gray is an active professional member of The World Futurist Society.

Jenny

So in the future we will be more stupid than ever, there maybe economic collapse, as there is no one to buy stuff and if there is the mother of all solar storms or any type of EMP, we are all stuffed, as no one will probably have the skills to do anything for them selves. But who is to says the future will carry on advancing in the way it is. For what we know, at some point the system might collapse. Propping it up may buy time, but it may, at some point, it may come to a natural end.
jamie nicholl-shelley

yup :).
Honestly though with regards to work: the only reason we’re not working 4 hours a day is the greed higher up the chain. But that’s more an economic realism.
With regards to technology.well it further leads to the irrelevance of the low waged or poorly educated. which only leads to more of the same. So it’s quite clearly a double edged sword.