Technology and the Future of Work

Albert Langer

(Originally published in Readings on Technology and Change, Community Research Centre, Monash University 1985)

Attitudes towards technology and the future of work reflect a fundamental division in world outlook generally.

People with a progressive world outlook compare the present with the future and find it wanting. They are excited by the possibilities of the future and optimistic about achieving those possibilities. Correspondingly they are discOntented with the present and welcome its disintegration. Above all, progressives advocate the abolition of the wages system, and the system of property ownership on which it rests, as the principal barrier to the unfolding of human potential.