An interesting site, to me anyway. Ignore it, read it, pick at it, leave it be, criticize, highlight, do as you wish.
http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter1-1.phpFor at least 200 years now, futurists have been predicting the imminent rise of a technological utopia, drawing on the premise that technology will free humankind from labor, suffering, disease, and possibly even death. Underlying this view is a defining story of our civilization: that science has brought us from a state of ignorance to an increasing understanding of the physical universe, and that technology has brought us from a state of dependency on nature's whims to an increasing mastery of the material world. Someday in the future, goes the story, our understanding and control will be complete.
At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, it seemed obvious that the Age of Coal would usher in a new era of leisure. In one industry after another, a machine was able to "do the work of a thousand men". Soon the day would come when all work was mechanized: if a machine could do the work of a thousand men, then it stood to reason that each man would have only to work one-thousandth as hard.
As the Industrial Revolution progressed it soon became apparent that most people were doing more work, not less. True, the spinning jenny and power loom freed millions of women from the tedium of spinning their own thread and weaving their own cloth, but replaced that tedium with the horrors of the textile mill. Similarly, the steel foundry replaced the blacksmith's shop, the railroad car replaced the horse and cart, the steam shovel replaced the pick and spade. Yet in terms of working hours, working conditions, danger and monotony, the Industrial Revolution had not lived up to the promise encoded in the term "labor-saving device". The Age of Leisure, where coal-powered machines would do the work while people looked on and reaped the benefits, was going to arrive later than expected.
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