[Chinjut]

In fairness, even prior to 1900, quite a lot of people were upset at these sorts of changes, at least when it was their particular livelihood on the line; consider the historical Luddites, for example. Or the subculture behind the tale of John Henry.

[kissickas]

When I was in elementary school, I distinctly remember an optimistic perspective in response to automation of labor. Now, I highly doubt that children are being taught that this is a good thing and it seems to be mostly doom and gloom (although perhaps I'm just too separated from this point of view, having no children myself).

What changed? Certainly people during the past industrial revolutions were not all optimists, especially in the time before unions when labor was considered almost 100% disposable. But in the last few decades, hasn't there been some shift in what we expect out of this "new wave"?

I think about this almost daily, and all I can come up with is some sort of improved welfare system that depends on a very cheap, automated production of food. And I imagine we will have to shift (already!) back to single-earner households as the economy just isn't made to provide so many jobs anymore. If anyone could point me in the direction of some actually decent reading material on the topic I would be grateful.

[VLM]

"some sort of improved welfare system"

Retirement is culturally new and also is no longer something you do right before you die, but if you examine the numbers, soon a rather large fraction of the population will be retired.

Much as childhood used to mean short manual labor on the farm or sweatshop factory, but now means sitting in school for 20 years.

I find it highly likely that both ages will grow toward the middle, and much as joining .mil and being a soldier is seen as a young person's game, or dare I say being a software developer is seen as being a young persons game, everyone will "get used to" the idea that you only work from age 30 to 40, perhaps. Sit in school, maybe national service, raise your kids, until maybe 35, then retire at 45. If everyone (at least female) has kids in their 20s, that means we wouldn't need much if any day care, and we'd be retired in time to play with / supervise grandkids.

Culturally I bet we'd see a bifurcation of work. "real work" would be what grunt labor still exists, stereotypical millwright work on robots at industrial plants, and writing boring TPS reports and CRUD websites. AKA "the grind". Retired work would be passive income lifestyle businesses and arts n crafts. Personally I'd probably go full on FOSS development rather than everything being the property of my employer. My grandmother would likely go full on knitting, selling $400 sweaters similar to but better than the ones at Nordstroms. My wife seems to enjoy traveling and as a FOSS guy all I need is a place to charge my laptop and the occasional network connection so I'm good with that. I would imagine no small number of people would get really into religion, exercise, watching youtube videos...