Inventing a better future of work: the Working Futures science fiction anthology of better futures for workers and jobs

[Worried about automation and high-tech unemployment, or gig economy labor apocalypses? Techdirt's Mike Masnick and the Copia Institute have pulled together an outstanding anthology of speculative fiction about better futures for work and workers, called Working Futures, which is just out. This kind of speculation-for-good is such a cool idea, and I'm delighted to give Mike a little space to discuss it. -Cory]

Over the past decade -- as technology has advanced in two specific areas: the gig economy and artificial intelligence -- theres been a lot of discussion about the nature of work and the future of work. Ive been somewhat frustrated by many of these discussions, as they always tend to fall broadly into two competing camps: people insisting that all the jobs will go away and were all doomed, or those who insist that everything will work itself out, it always does.

The problem with both of these views is it gives us nothing to go on in the meantime. It tells us nothing that we can do to make the world a better place. Both involve a form of throwing up our hands and letting the currents of innovation drag us along, whether for good or for bad. Thats incredibly unsatisfying. In either case, Id like to be working to make the end result a better world -- and, as John Perry Barlow famously used to say (quoting Alan Kay), the best way to predict the future is to invent it.

So, the Copia Institute (which is the think tank arm of Techdirt) set out to see if we might help invent some futures. Read the rest