The fact that we don't like to exist in the presence of those who work to make our lives easy is not a particularly well-hidden secret. You won't have to look too hard to find news of housing societies with separate entrances / elevators for "maids and drivers". I once...

...actually heard a Hindi teacher say that one of her students, when asked to speak in Hindi during Hindi class, said, "We only use Hindi when speaking with servants". Basically, among the urban upper caste / class, every attempt is made to maintain distance from "those people".

These biases show in our daily conduct obviously, but also in the kind of standup comedy we laugh at (jokes about cabbies, maids, and sabzi walas), and TV ads (where we either laugh at the silliness of "those people" or pretend we are heroes for being nice to them). But the...

...reason I am writing about this is because of something very specific. I saw an ad featuring a robotic maid on TV and it made me wonder how contemporary classist biases will translate into the utopian futures science fiction promises us. Because think about it, if our ideal...

...present is one where we don't have to see the worker or speak to the maid, what is our ideal future going to look like? Enter, the automated future. Automatic vehicles - no drivers. Futures with automatic home delivery of groceries - no sabzi wala. Automated home cleaning...

...devices - no bai and no kaamwali. We even see robots that exist only to serve us - meaning we don't have to bother with things like respect and rights. A kind of new slavery that is custom designed to spare us inconvenient annoyances like guilt and introspection. In this...

...amazing future, you will not have to even see the labour that makes your life easy. They won't visit your home. They will leave packages outside your door. You will not have to speak with them or hand them money. They will not sit on the roadside. They will work deep inside...

...warehouses and their fingerprints will not be on the objects you pick up. You will be able to your entire life without even acknowledging your existence. You can do that today also but it takes some effort and wall-building that you are not always able to afford. In the...

...future, such walls will be within everyone's reach. Everyone who matters that is. Oh, and by the way, in this future, who is your best friend? The AI system that connects all aspects of your life of course. It gets your groceries, it drives your car, it calls the plumber...

...when it detects a leak in one of your pipes. It is an entirely unrelated fact that this AI was created, is maintained, and is owned by a multinational corporation. In the future that is amazing, "those people" are not your friends. But the corporation is. Science fiction is...

...essentially our dreams about the future. And it is fed by the realities of our present. The idea that technology alone is the solution to all that ails us is stupid at best and toxic at worst. When sociology is ignored in speculative fiction, it gives rise to a futurism...

...devoid of the need for empathy. When policy is made purely from an engineering perspective, it will create a future that will be much like the present. The future will not bring solutions if the present fails to acknowledge the problems. There isn't an app for everything.

Article format. https://www.vimohsworld.com/p/utopia-cannot-be-automated