As I argued in the Boston Review in 2018, ‘With automation, the plutocrats get the increased efficiency and returns of new machinery and processes.’ And what about the rest of us? We get ‘stagnant wages, increasingly precarious work, and cultural kipple.’ The struggle we face isn’t about technology — of the tools we use — it is about application.
It is a struggle to change relations of production.
As new and headline-grabbing technologies emerge, and as their applications become more enticing and widespread, we ought to remember what this is all about and keep our eye on the prize.
We can imagine a future in which the robots are owned by and work for the many instead of the few: https://tinyurl.com/nhfy383c.