As we know, epochal economics changes, occur when a new economic system converges with a communications revolution.
In roughly chronological order:
– Shall eat bread by the sweat of your brow (the work according to the Bible)
– Italy is a democratic republic, founded on work (Italian Constitution)
– Work makes you free (Arbeit macht frei at the entrance of the Nazi camps)
– Tripalium (etymology)
This is the Social Revolution: deletion of the word work. Or, at least, adding to the word work the adjectives “free and voluntary”.
Like all revolutions, it poses new problems and extremely difficult to solve.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is now mentioned in all environments and almost at all levels. Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Bio Engineering, Internet of Things, Total connection, and more will, and are already having huge influence on the way we live the reality. We have also talked about it on this magazine. (See “La scienza e la tecnologia non possono essere fermate” “Il lavoro”)
What we intend now to treat is the influence that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have on employment and thus will force us to call it Social Revolution.
Important studies inform us that in the next twenty years the 50% of professions and trades that we know today will disappear. This news should lead to the convening of a permanent meeting at the United Nations and in all the parliaments of the globe to find a solution. This is not happening.
How is it possible not to realize that there is and there will be less and less need for human work as well as it is understood now? The automation and artificial intelligence are progressing faster and faster in all fields: agriculture, industry, services. We would need a vision and a long-range strategy. We would need statesmen and not politicians who only look at the next election. And we would also not need “professors” who still use old paradigm.
“We will know that the machines are really smart when, instead of going to work, they will want to go to the beach”.
Before commenting on and run the risk of making sports bar speeches, and thus give reason to Umberto Eco, we should read up.
Here are some useful documents:
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/21/408234543/will-your-job-be-done-by-a-machine
http://futurism.com/images/age-automation-welcome-next-great-revolution/?src=home
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/
And this, may be, could be a way out:
http://basicincome-europe.org/ubie/
