The end (of work)

I’ve written an article for DAS MAGAZIN, which will be published Saturday, about the process of automation and its consequences for human labour. It basically takes the arguments of Race Against the Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. They argue that the jobs in the US which were gone after the financial crisis won’t come back because they were replaced by machines.

The incredible technological progress of the last years brought us Siri, driver-less cars, drones (and clever algorithms, like the one Paul Feigelfeld described, which will do the next round of 60days for me. Excellent.) What I am trying in my text is to adopt the thesis of Brynjolfsson and McAfee to the current situation in Switzerland (read it in detail Saturday or tomorrow on your iPad). The discussion about the end of human work is not new at all. John Maynard Keynes was talking in the 1930s in his essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren about the danger of technological unemployment. And in the 19th century the so called Luddites fought against the spinning machines (yes, a Don Quixote kind of fight the windmills).

The question which is not that easy to be answered is: Are we doomed? Will we ever find jobs again? As doomed as we look it is not obvious that all human labour will be replaced by machines. It is very likely that many jobs are merely geographically moved, as Enrico Moretti, an economist from Berkeley explains. It is also possible that human labour remains cheaper than technology what makes it again more attractive (doesn’t sound too promising, I know). However, there is a good chance that Average Is Over, a claim made by Tyler Cowen (what sounds a little like “in the good old times” everything was better).

It was at the Biennale in Vernice where I watched this incredible video Da Vinci (2012) by Yuri Ancarin in which a surgeon uses the Da Vinci robot to do an operation in high speed. I guess this is the future, the dance with the machines.

And because it’s my last pick today

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUIQgEVDM4