This author is pointing out that the fraction of the tech dream du jour that is actually realized is consistently about 1%, so taking tech dreams du jour seriously is guaranteed to give you a false world model. Which is unhelpful and maladaptive, unless perhaps your goal is to make money off of other people with that false world model.

I believe that full automation of the mundanities of human life is coming in the fullness of time. But for that insight to be helpful to me, I have to get the timing right, and the data suggests I should be extremely skeptical about excitable tech guys predicting big things in short time frames.

Talking heads reference?

Part of me thinks that we're already reaching peak stuff/employment/the current system.

We are currently churning out graduates who work in coffee shops. More and more employment is make work. The issue is can we carry on requiring work, making it a moral requirement.

I suspect it'll be like the industrial revolution, when the average labourer moved to a factory in the city living in a slum, they were worse off. It took time for the conditions of the working class to improve.

Basic income is touted as the solution, but then globalisation means workers are moving much more and I'm not sure the 2 are compatible. Not that I have a better idea.

I do think we need a cultural change decoupling work from self worth. It's becoming less and less defensible to require everyone to work to be 'deserving'.

All that being said, there will still be jobs, there will always be demand for hand made, or something that isn't soulless corporatism. Although I'm starting to sound like Star Treks view of the future, which may not achievable