Craft in Post Automation
As we encounter job losses due to Automation and Robotics in upcoming quarter of 21st century the big question might be what do we do with our time ? We will not need to do much to live our lives, food made would be made by our WholeFoods food printers, Everything we need will come to our home delivery, by drones, perhaps we all would also get a universal basic income, okay not all but atleast a privileged few of humans will have such access.
In a world where as Yuval Noah Harari puts it ‘Irrelevance rather than Exploitation’ is the bigger threat, what can we do to remain relevant? And Stay Human? The answer can have ranges from creative activities to tasks which need human love and empathy, like raising a child. Perhaps instead of projecting forward, we should look at our Grandma’s for the answers, In a lot of urban middle class families, Grandmothers are a person who are financially taken care of by rest of the family much like a Universal Basic Income and rarely have heavy and difficult household duties. Maybe we all should do what she would do, We should start knitting sweaters. That will lead to too many sweaters maybe, so we should all take different forms of crafts and making we like.
Why craft ? why not just binge watch Netflix? Short answer, we are beings with brains to think and hands to work with. A sudden eradication of intellectual and creative labor might do what eradication of manual labor and exercise did to us, obesity and stress but on a psychological level. The purpose of life is not in trying to be happy but It is an attempt to be useful. Crafts like embroidery, knitting, even cooking has been used by grandmother to show love and make their lives meaningful for countless years now.Practising craft as a hobby may keep you sane in future, albeit it sounds similar to hamsters running in wheel to keep fit, It serves no purpose but to survive, very dystopian.
But what if we somehow remodel our social and economic system around how much,love and care we provide for ourselves and others ? What if your ‘worth’ is determined by the ‘Proof of love’, ‘Proof of creation’,’Proof of craftsmanship’ on the socio-economic blockchain.
Making is one of the most fundamental human activity, Our Society and Economy has been shaped around the idea of making things and sharing them, not just on convenience and efficiency. The future Silicon Valley and Technologist are showing is the one where convenience and efficiency takes the center stage completely neglecting the very thing which laid path for human evolution, the brain and the hand.
