What would human do in the world of automation?
Very intriguing story on the not-faraway future. The author keep talking about the U.S. society (of course it is about U.S.) which made me realize there are a lot of similarities between U.S. and Korea and our society too is gonna suffer from automation. Well, the author express his worry and compassion mainly on middle-aged man and I guess that is because he himself is male and kind of entered the center of American society which made him keep thinking of the future on their perspective of view. I'm saying this because his perspective and concern may seem naive but we also have to think about white man suffer from poverty and what society could do for them when automation strikes.
The situation that poor white men in keep reminds me of that of Korean man. There's no excuse that being a man in Korea is quite a privilege in Korea, but as the society's keep suffering from scarcity, just living on its own is not easy even for the man. This book kind of made me think in their shoes. The world would probably tough for them too. As they do not have any intelligence to see the structure they just abuse and mock the underdogs including women instead. But we gotta find ways to embrace them and live together in this society. Ahh just distracted again.
The essentials are in the third part so if you want to find ways to successfully cope with the wave of automation and don't have time to read the whole book, just go straight to the third part and read it. The suggestions may seem too ideal and naive but we got to remind ourselves that every common sense that we take for granted in modern society was sounds kind of ridiculous when it first came out to the world. If the things goes well, people of our next generation or our next-next generation may think we are quite weird to not understand the value they take for granted.
As there's low risk of losing a job for me I was keep thinking about what would I gonna do in my free time and what is worth having a job. The thought goes along with the author in the third part so it was quite interesting to read his suggestions. I cannot deny that the picture of dystopia keep blurting out during reading but I hope our society could lead all of us to a better future.
Benjamin Hunnicutt, a historian at the University of Iowa, argues that if a cashier‘s job were a video game, we would call it completely mindless and the worst game ever designed. But if it‘s called a job, politicians praise it as dignified and meaningful. - P68
Whether work is good for humans depends a bit on your point of view. We don‘t like it and we‘re almost certainly getting too much of it. But we don‘t know what to do with ourselves without it. Oscar Wilde wrote, "Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do." Unfortunately that may describe the vast majority of us.
The challenge we must overcome is that humans need work more than work needs us. - P68
Other workers describe new and for-profit schools of dubious quality offering retraining targeted to laid-off workers with little benefit. The sociologist who interviewed Stephen described him and his fellow laid-off workers as having gone through "the fiction of learning so that they could put it on their resumes and the state could write them off as retrained." - P76
In his book Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz describes the current generation of strivers as "driven to achieve without knowing why." and then they become paralyzed when they‘re not sure how to proceed. - P91
Thousands of young people share the same thirst to achieve that I had-rising out of a combination of family pressures, alienation, and an identity that they‘re smart or talented or special or destined to do something significant-all on top of a dread that failure to stay in the winner‘s circle leads to an unimaginably dire fate. - P91
Entrepreneurs have among the most powerful mindsets of abundance of anyone. Silicon Valley, TED, the Aspen Institute-they‘re uplifting places because the people in attendance believe that all things are possible, often because they‘ve made unlikely things happen for themselves. You can say something about starting a new company or organization, and people simply nod at you and think, "Of course." It‘s like there‘s more oxygen for ideas, along with more money. - P104
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