Automation and the Future of Work

160 pages

English language

Published 2022 by Verso Books.

ISBN:
978-1-83976-132-4
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4 stars (1 review)

A consensus-shattering account of automation technologies and their effect on workplaces and the labor market

In this consensus-shattering account of automation technologies, Aaron Benanav investigates the economic trends that will shape our working lives far into the future.

Silicon Valley titans, politicians, techno-futurists, and social critics have united in arguing that we are on the cusp of an era of rapid technological automation, heralding the end of work as we know it. But does the muchdiscussed “rise of the robots” really explain the long-term decline in the demand for labor?

Automation and the Future of Work uncovers the deep weaknesses of twenty-first-century capitalism and the reasons why the engine of economic growth keeps stalling. Equally important, Benanav goes on to salvage from automation discourse its utopian content: the positive vision of a world without work. What social movements, he asks, are required to propel us into post-scarcity if technological innovation …

3 editions

marxists on the machine

4 stars

just finished this book today. pretty decent and the take was a bit more nuance than i was expecting. Generally I think of this author is the luxury space communism camp, and very much like: communism creates innovation, innovation frees us from work, we all get Rolexes. presented in the marxist does economics way, there is arguments presented from the right and left side of a full-automation perspective (more technology, machines, robots, AI than just AI). anti-tech arguments aren't really explored but he tries to poke holes in the idea that work will be eliminated or made obsolete and this will lead to downtime or communism. His larger argument is that surplus labour and declining employment and automation/production are not linked as we are often presented by economics and politicians and that capitalism is making people obsolete, not technology specifically.

not trying to make the arguments here just present them. …