- What would you do if you had all the free time in the world?
- An OnlySky essay explores this question in the context of AI;
- How Harari anticipated this;
- My own answer to this question, since I’m retired and do effectively have all the free time in the world;
- Bruckner 9, Jukka-Pekka Saraste.
Much of this is familiar, but increasingly pertinent.
OnlySky, Susan Fourtané, 9 Sep 2026: Post-work society: The future of life after jobs, subtitled “What would you do if you had all the free time in the world?”
Technology is steadily becoming more capable of doing the work necessary for human survival. Is this a transition we should welcome, or one we should fear?
Imagine a world in which AI systems manage most administrative tasks, software development, logistics, and research programs, while robots manufacture products, construct buildings, grow food, and maintain infrastructure. Human beings would still have to be involved, particularly in positions where empathy, judgment, creativity, and social trust matter. But increasingly few people would need to work forty or more hours a week to maintain an economy capable of producing what the rest of us need.
Since the earliest chapters of human history, work has been a necessity. It’s not just a way to earn money, but a source of identity and status. Historically, work has also been one of the main ways people have organized their days and lives and made social connections.
Although the idea of a post-work society has been gaining more attention in the past few years, this does not necessarily mean that humans will stop doing things entirely, or transition to lives of uselessness and indolence. Instead, it means that as mass automation, physical AI, and robotics continue to advance and become mainstream, having a traditional job may no longer be the default way of contributing to society or even of securing a livelihood.
It’s easy to see the transition already in progress. If you’re like most workers, when you compare your job today to how it was five to seven years ago, you’ll see that a lot has changed in that relatively short period of time.
Ideas: public service jobs. Universal basic income — because all that wealth generated by AI, for instance, might as well be distributed to those who indirectly support it. Yet,
For generations, we have been taught that work gives life structure and purpose. Removing the need for work might give people enormous freedom to enjoy and contemplate life, but at least some people will face a profound identity crisis, at least until the new economy and way of living settle in.
And so on. This is the promise of AI and automation. It’s not that AI will take away jobs, it’s that AI will produce what those jobs used to produce, and the benefits can just be passed on to those former workers. Surely this has already been happening to some degree since the Industrial Revolution.
In the rosiest scenario, artificial intelligence and robots will handle the farming, manufacturing, and providing basic services, while governments provide universal support in the form of free housing, food, and energy to all citizens. A post-work society could therefore become a renaissance of human activity. People might spend more time raising children, caring for relatives, learning, creating art, exploring nature, participating in local communities, traveling, doing sports, or simply thinking. Education might become lifelong, rather than something completed before employment begins. The end of wages might signify money’s shift from a tool for survival to a credit system for luxury goods, travel, and experiences.
On the other hand, everything might become even more deeply unequal.
What might happen is that the oligarchs retain control of that wealth for themselves. We’ve already seen this happening too. The essay concludes:
The real question is whether humans are able to redesign society so that freedom from work becomes freedom to live, rather than freedom from a paycheck and the means of supporting ourselves.
For those who live through it, that might be the greatest social experiment of the next century.
You can see how conservatives/Republicans will try to swing things their way, so they retain their advantage, even when technology allows otherwise. But I predict that this trend is the one thing that might undermine the position of the oligarchs, as it becomes increasingly obvious, even to MAGA conservatives, that the wealthy did not actually earn their wealth.
\
Two angles.
Harari anticipated this, in his book HOMO DEUS (reviewed here), in his suggestion that “useless humans” whose jobs have been replaced by AI might fill their lives taking drugs (not just hallucinogenic ones) and playing computer games.
But what do humans actually do with their free time? Which is much more plentiful now than it was a century or two ago? My main impression is that they watch sports. In person, or virtually. The largest facilities in most big cities are the sports stadiums. Some people even participate in sports, or other outdoor activities, like hiking (as I noted in Sunday’s post). And many parents are absorbed by raising their children, which includes weekend activities to take classes in swimming or work on science fairs. (This helicopter parenting is part of this trend of adults having more spare time.)
And they view entertainment: concerts and movies. And they participate in social groups bound by interests, like knitting groups and car clubs. Humans need social interaction and a sense of belonging. Going to work every day fulfilled those needs. More and more, other social groups are providing those functions.
\
Second angle. In my own case. I have all the free time in the world, in a sense, since I’ve had no day job since I was laid off almost 14 years ago. I’ve done some occasional contractor work for my old company since then, and still do some freelance work for the website, Locus Online, that I ran all by myself until nine years ago. That freelance work takes, let me see, about 4 hours a week, on average. The rest of the week is “free time.”
And what do I do? I suppose I’m engaged in “learning,” to quote one of the above excerpts. I read lots of books. I try to understand the big picture and put everything together, driven partly by my ideas about how to understand science fiction (and horror, and fantasy). I’m trying to arrive at some grand conclusion. Always tentative. But I’m close, relatively speaking.
I’m more interested in doing this than in traveling (my partner’s preference, since he Does Not Read, anything) or joining community groups, or whatever.
\
That’s enough for this evening; I’ll save the kibble and other more substantial pieces for another post.
\\\
A good view of Bruckner’s 9th. In a way this is a compression of his 8th (compare especially the upward arcs of the finales), and has Bruckner’s greatest scherzo, perhaps. The finale begins a little too quickly here, for my taste.
I should mention that Bruckner’s 9th was unfinished; only three movements were completed, though the third sounds like the finale of any other of his symphonies. Perhaps the unfinished one was the other middle movement.
Also, I’ll note again that unlike some other composers, especially Beethoven and Mahler, Bruckner’s symphonies were all the same, in a sense. All four movements, with big first and fourth, and middle scherzos and slow movements. Many have compared his symphonies to cathedrals, and the difference between his symphonies are rather like differences between cathedrals. Details difference, but basic structure the same.
