John Danaher on Automation and Utopia

John Danaher, Senior Lecturer in Law at NUI Galway, discusses his new book, Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World Without Work.

On the season finale of Technology & Prose, John Danaher joins host Nikita Aggarwal to talk about the meaning of work (1:13), the automatability and automation of work (2:36), why we should welcome automation — the case for technological unemployment (10:02), the gig economy, Uber, and the limits to improving the conditions of work (13:25), building a post-work future - the ‘cyborg utopia’ and the ‘virtual utopia’ (19:25), problems with cyborgization (22:44), the meaning of utopia (28:00), the concept of virtual reality (29:53), constructing a virtual utopia, the ‘utopia of games’ (34:40), psychedelics and other sources of human flourishing in a post-work future (41:25), Big Tech, universal basic income (UBI) and the political economy of virtual utopia (42:34).

References

Manyika et al, A Future that Works: Automation, Employment and Productivity

Frey and Osborne, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation? 

Moravec’s paradox

Robertson, Robo Sapiens Japanicus 

UK Supreme Court decision in Uber v Aslam 

Gallup, State of the Global Workplace Report  

Harari, Sapiens and Homo Deus 

Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia 

Macintyre, After Virtue 

Check out John’s blog and podcast, Philosophical Disquisitions

Recorded on 29th March 2021.