What will we do in post-work? Everything!

I’ve thought a lot about what we might do in the post-work future of After Capitalism:

One response, captured here, is to imagine all the great things we could do that we don’t currently have time for.

A second response, was to muse about, the wonderful possibility of just doing nothing.

And now, we have a third alternative: everything.

The idea here builds off the trend that has business, government, educators, etc. increasingly off-loading things they used to do for the customer, over to the customer. They cut their own costs by having the customer do the work instead.

Speakers and consultants, for example, probably recognize that they have become de facto purchasing or accounts receivable personnel. To get your fee, you need to register in one of the various byzantine payment sites. They are typically accompanied by multi-page instructional attachments and helpful video links. I got one recently that offered to set up a zoom call to walk me through how to sign up to get a speaking fee. Even if you do navigate the set-up, it is typically returned to you several times. I noted with some irony that I spent more time doing the invoicing than the gig recently.

I know that’s a bit whiny, but think about how this phenomenon is popping up in more aspects of your life. It seems like the beginning was pumping our own gas several decades ago. And it’s grown from there. Self-checkout at the grocery. Booking our own travel. Buy your tickets at the movie kiosk. Or the joy of refund-processing. Booking a doctor’s appointment and filing your claims. Signing up for classes in an automated portal. Or we are sent to customer help forums to find answers to our problems, that are most likely not there. Bussing our own tables at the restaurant. Put together your own furniture. YouTube videos for pretty much anything. Etc.., etc.

I am being snarky here, but a key principle of futures is trying to understand what the world is telling us. It is telling us do-it-yourself. Okay, let’s work with that. Perhaps we should embrace a return to a world of self-sufficiency. In the name of convenience, we offloaded more and more of things we used to do to various labor-saving devices and in the current vogue the “as-a-service” movement. [Noted that it’s first-world problems here.] Automation does not mean there isn’t stuff to do – it means that work is distributed to machines and ultimately the users. Instead of nothing to do in the post-work future, we have to do everything. And that can be okay. Right now, we should feel snarky, because the “savings” is going to the capitalists. But in a post-work future, the savings are for us all. – Andy Hines