Friday, March 9, 2007

The Future of Leisure That Never Arrived (New York Times, 2007)

In yesterday's article by Hal R. Varian, (a professor of business, economics, and information at UC-Berkeley), we see that over the last 100 years, society has been convinced technological and social progress would bring about vast amounts of leisure time.

"When you account for the much longer time in school, the more or less constant amount of time spent on housework, and make a few other adjustments, hours spent on purely enjoyable activities haven’t changed that much in the last century. Keynes may have been right that future generations will have a lot of time on their hands, but I wouldn’t bet on that happening anytime soon."

See also:
What to do with all this leisure time? (1966) 22 Feb 2007

2 comments:

Unknown said...

But it's a worthy goal. Work for survival is beneath human dignity. Sadly, it's part of reality for the time being. Perhaps someday, our tool-using capacity will outstrip the needs of survival. I doubt it though. The needs for survival will just change.

lavardera said...

I think the Star Trek scenario is more in our nature - more time to pursue the things that interest you, and freed up to do so, greater achievements in narrow areas of interest will follow. But we are likely to keep ourselves busy with work, no matter what.