An acquaintance sent me a PM with a link to two interesting entries on the Halfsigma blog.

...

"As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products. We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful. This sort of work isn't so much employment as it is creative activity. Unlike Industrial Age employment, digital production can be done from the home, independently, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion without going through big corporations. We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another -- all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff."

The blogger comments this:

He makes it sound a lot better than it is. Most people lack the IQ to “write books” or “educate and inspire one another.” Of course, even the low IQ can solve problems, but the only problems they can solve seem trivial and ridiculously easy to those of higher IQs. Anyway, there’s already slave labor in China making virtual gold playing World of Warcraft. So it’s not too much of a leap of imagination to think that one day, the U.S. government will pay its citizens to do pointless virtual activities (but which, through clever programming, seem meaningful to the participants). Also, it’s humorous to note that the current mode of thinking is that poor people have to work and rich people live a life of leisure. But in the future, it’s likely that working at real jobs will be a luxury for the rich, and the masses will play computer games for a living.

Jobs and status:

anonmouse writes: "The "masses" mostly waste away in cubicles doing makework. The elite do things like install mosquito nets in sunny third world locales" I assume that anonmouse is referring to activities like the Peace Corps in which young people from well-off families do work in third world countries that would be considered menial low-wage low-status work if done in the United States. This demonstrates two points. (1) If people are convinced that a certain activity is high status or in some way “meaningful,” they will gladly do it no matter how objectively stupid it may be. (2) We currently see jobs becoming a luxury for the rich. Only young people from well-off families can afford to “work” in the Peace Corps.

This actually is an amusing little scenario spiced with the familiar observation that charity isn't about helping people. Perhaps an example of how future dream time may be strange and interesting compared to our little portion of it, to which we are acclimatised.