[stakhanov]

I think, in some way or another, the economy will settle into an equilibrium where everyone is doing some kind of paid work, but if we automate away the enjoyable work and the difficult-to-automate work happens to be the type of work that's less enjoyable, then all our lives will be less enjoyable.

We've seen this play out in history with the various productivity-increasing technologies in manufacturing. I imagine that being a member of a crafts guild producing their wares in Renaissance Florence was a more fulfilling existence than being a modern assembly line worker who basically just fills in the difficult-to-automate gaps between the machines on an assembly line.

There are essentially two ways of using technology: One is where technology becomes an extension of your body (and, with AI, your brain) and puts more powerful means at your disposal to do what you want to do and have an effect on the world. The other is where your role in life is reduced to being a mere part in a machine -- someone else's machine.

And it's not in each individual's power to freely pick and choose how they will end up relating to technology. This is rather the result of societal-level forces, and there will be many people who will see their quality of life diminished by recent advances in technology.

[defrost]

Adding substance and example to the peer Murano comment

Lino Tagliapietra is a g'damn wizard.

I've had the pleasure of working with him in both Australia and New Zealand and I can't see his skill set being AI replicated anytime soon.

I dare say when it is we're all doomed. :-)

https://www.linotagliapietra.com/artist/biography

[JumpCrisscross]

> imagine that being a member of a crafts guild producing their wares in Renaissance Florence was a more fulfilling existence than being a modern assembly line worker who basically just fills in the difficult-to-automate gaps between the machines on an assembly line

I was in Murano last summer. They probably have more global demand for their handmade wares than they’ve ever had in history.

[stakhanov]

> ...more global demand

Maybe in absolute terms, given the expansion of the total size of the economy through history, but I can't imagine that the proportion of Italy's population that was able to sustain a middle class existence through artisanship was lower in the Renaissance than it is today.

In the Renaissance, artisanship was an economic necessity and a political system. Nowadays it's a weird meeing of supply-and-demand between the elites among the buyers and the elites among the sellers. Only the elites among the buyers can afford to buy goods that have been produced in a less economical way than functionally/aesthetically equivalent alternatives, just for the bragging rights connected with filling one's home with handmade stuff. Only the elites among the sellers can withstand the competition among those wanting to be such sellers.

Obviously those elites' point of view shouldn't be the only one informing the decisions about how we, as a society, want to relate to technology.

[JumpCrisscross]

> can't imagine that the proportion of Italy's population that was able to sustain a middle class existence through artisanship was lower in the Renaissance than it is today

I would love to see figures, actually. My gut feeling is it would be lower. The world was overall poorer, and still struggling to even feed itself.

[stakhanov]

> still struggling to even feed itself.

I don't think so, especially considering the plague. The economy was already set up to feed a lot more mouths than survived the plague, and places like Florence were the destination for many of those newly wealthy. The guilds also exercised political power, behaving as organized monopolies. You would think that monopolies are bad for the economy, but they were markedly different from today's monopolies in that their internal organization foreshadowed today's systems of democracy and a strong civil society.

So, to think of this as a golden age of artisanship, and to think that the phenomenon reached even into commoners' lives, is certainly more than mere romanticizing about the past ...though I don't claim to have a good quantitative grasp of it either.