Producers vs consumers

I've been reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, belated catching up on my futurology. No detailed comments until I'm done, but the following passage inspires a quick note:

The role of work will be to create knowledge of all kinds, from music and art to math and science. The role of play will be, well, to create knowledge, so there won't be a clear distinction between work and play. [p. 300]

This seems rather off the mark, informed by a certain blindness that I first became attuned to in quite a different context -- that of going to graduate school.

I can't begin to count how many aspiring academics I've met over the years who suddenly realized they didn't want to be academics, unclear how they had ended up so far along before figuring it out. Yet consider how future academicians are selected: show yourself to be a keen student, and you're tapped for the professoriate -- and even though your passion may be the consumption of knowledge, you've suddenly been tracked to become a producer. Pursuing your passion, you go to grad school, but the balance slowly and inexorably tips as you work up to your dissertation and begin to publish; next thing you know, you are in full production mode, consumption now largely relegated to feeding the research machine.

So no quibble here with Kurzweil's view of the work of the future as the creation of knowledge. But while some will find their recreation in creation, many more -- then as now -- will surely do so in the form of consumption. Work that seems like play has a way of eventually ending up not feeling much like play after all.

Posted by David on January 13, 2006 12:09 PM