Is outsourcing all menial and dull tasks to technology de-humanising us or giving the invisible ones a chance to have a different future?
I was cleaning our rubbish bin yesterday. A spectacularly irritating and inglorious task, when I could have been doing something much more stimulating instead.
Sadly, I couldn’t anymore ignore the mysterious smell, unidentified sticky objects and the real fear that the rubbish bin will soon walk away in self-disgust.
Despite the perceived waste of time doing an activity way 'below us', it is important to recognise the satisfaction of the result of menial work. You have made something better, nicer, cleaner and have gotten your hands dirty for it. You’ve worked.
I often dream of the time when we wouldn’t have to do any housework, daily cooking, clearing of breakfast tables with spilt milk, wading through endless washing, cleaning toilets, picking up lego pieces (ouch!) and the most annoying - family discussions about it.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to not have to ever deal with this and instead spend 3 hours a day more reading the paper, playing the piano, having a relaxing game of family monopoly (relaxing is debatable)? Never having to do physical domestic work!
Well, this is no revolution and has been the reality for many people and societies for millennia with the subjugation and employment slaves, maids, housekeepers, butlers. Even today we know people that surround themselves with a support team of nannies, cleaners, gardeners, cooks etc to allow them to work more, longer and for more money (note this is not my objective in life!).
What if this could be done entirely by a robot that everyone could afford - a domestic democracy? Wouldn’t that be amazing? No-one would have to lift a finger anymore aside for entertainment and hobbies.
You’d absolve yourself of two guilts. The guilt of hiring someone to be doing the jobs you consider too menial and mundane, and also the guilt of perpetuating an obvious class system (though you are giving someone a wage and that’s another discussion altogether!).
At this point I must come clean. We do have a cleaning lady and I am eternally grateful to her. She’s not amazing, she’s not a perfectionist but she’s reliable and she’s there. I could tell her every time to do things differently or better, well I pay her after all. But I personally don’t feel comfortable with this sense of superiority and micro-management. I like to let her be and do her job the best she knows how. She does give me 2 extra hours of week to do something else and saves equally 2 extra hours of discussions.
While this is a luxury for us, I see it as an investment in our family harmony. So would I be more comfortable to just have a robot zooming around doing all the stuff that takes up our time? And every day no less! Of course! I'd love it. don’t have to feel bad if the work is too much, it doesn’t get tired. I don’t have to feel self-conscious if we’ve left left dirty socks on the floor - it doesn’t care. I don't even have to be nice to it.
What could this mean on a larger scale! For one, it could put couples therapists out of a job! More seriously, this could open up a whole new world where girls and women can follow an education and consistent career. Of course, there is the consideration of how the remittance economy would be impacted by Indonesian maids no longer being demanded on such a scale in the Middle East. But maybe this can interrupt the abusive conditions they often work in and still find employment but with more rights and more respect.
There is a but to all this domestic digitalisation. How would our kids and the subsequent generations develop if they didn’t have to do anything at home? Would they become spoilt brats dependent on always having someTHING to do stuff for them? Would they and their encompassing society just become lazy (fat!) and unappreciative of what real life is for the sake of enjoying and bettering ourselves in some other way or would this liberate them from unnecessary menial burden in favour of more innovation, creativity and discovery?
Is a degree of domestic, daily work necessary to keep us grounded and appreciative of the trace we as humans leave and the requirements we have for a high life-quality - we produce dirt, rubbish, we need to eat decent and regular meals, have a clean table and clean floor, clean toilet? It's our crap, why shouldn't we take responsibility for it?
On the other hand, no-one in the developed world misses going down to the river to wash clothes by hand and doesn’t even think about stuffing a bunch of random clothes and colours in an automated device to do the same job, while they can simultaneously drink a glass of wine, read a book, make dinner or go for a run.
Perhaps this idea is something that we just have to evolve beyond, just like when we discovered fire, started to eat cooked food, our brain grew and basically kicked off the intellectual evolution.
We have not reached the full potential of the intellectual (and fourth digitial revolution for that matter) because 50% of the population is busy doing housework and childcare. Is it time to give this chunk of the population also a chance by freeing up their time?
I’d love to know if in a 100 years no-one remembers anymore what it was to fold laundry (and look for the missing sock!), clear a table, make a meal. Because we would be too busy exploring cities, flying helicopters, doing base jumping, getting our PhD in Astrophysics reading War and Peace for the 10th time...all most likely in a VR world!
Do we need to just break free?
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