The Fourth Industrial Revolution will change the way humans work across the globe. A look back far into human history may help to find inspirations for designing these new ways of working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In general, economic historians claim that the modern understanding of work \/ labour is not applicable for work in Antiquity (von Reeden, 2016). As outlined in part I of this article, this is true for what is called work 1.0 to 3.0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With agriculture accounting for the largest sector and slave labour an important factor, in the ancient economy there was no labour market in the current sense. Wages were stable over long periods and demands that could not be met by hiring workers were met by acquiring slaves. Workers did not have one \u201cemployer\u201d for who they exclusively worked and who in return paid them a steady wage but offered their work on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the status of workers and slaves differed only marginally, and the lives of many workers were as tough or harder than those of slaves, in legal terms, they were substantially different from each other: workers had civil laws that allowed them to decide for whom they worked and to start a family. Slaves, in contrast, were considered \u201ctalking tools\u201d without any rights that were in the possession of their masters (Prell, 1997, p. 150).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being intelligent and sometimes better educated that their masters, apart from hard physical tasks in agriculture and production slaves[i]<\/a> performed all kinds of administrative and social work from accounting to medical service, legal advice, and teaching children. In many contexts, slaves even managed and trained other slaves to perform specialised tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In ancient Greece, this substantially relieved their masters, the small number of male polis citizens that were either wealthy or benefited from the precursor of a social security system, of the need for physical work (ponos <\/em>or mochdos<\/em>, that both also mean pain and hardship), and (re)productive labour (oikonomia<\/em>, sometimes also performed by women who were not considered citizens either), and gave them the opportunity to fully engage in politics (praxis<\/em>), business (ascholia<\/em>) or philosophical muse (schole)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A similar situation can be observed in the ancient Roman Empire where the availability of slaves had let to the complete devaluation of any physical work (labor<\/em>), craftsmanship (opus<\/em>) and paid labour (industria<\/em>). Only managerial functions (especially in trading) and professions that made use of the liberal arts, like rhetors, doctors, lawyers, and architects, constituted exceptions to this (cf. Cicero, De Officiis I, 150-151). However, these professions were still not regarded as equal to the business (negotium<\/em>) of wealthy Roman citizens, as they depended on payment from customers and were thus not \u201cfree\u201d to work only as much as left them enough time to be politically active or indulge in philosophy (otium<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consequently, what was considered \u201cgood work\u201d in Antiquity was doing business and politics only to an extent that allowed for a sufficient amount of muse (schole\/ otium<\/em>). Aristotle remarked on the relationship between work and muse:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The whole of life is divided into two parts, business and muse, war and peace, and the ends of actions in those that are necessary and useful, and those that are honourable. And the preference that is given to one or the other class of actions must necessarily be like the preference that is given to one or other part of the soul and its actions; there must be war for the sake of peace, business for the sake of muse, things useful and necessary for the sake of things honourable.<\/em> <\/mark><\/p>\n(Aristotle, Politics VII, XIV; author\u2019s own translation)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Working was thus a means to the end of having muse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Muse as such, however, was not purely leisure or \u201cdoing nothing\u201d, but doing the pursuing of actions without a clear purpose respectively for their own sake. In many cases, this equalled learning, physical workout, or socialising, but the concept itself was not limited to that. Not matter what one did in times of muse, it was assumed, that only those who could afford this luxury could over the course of their lives develop into actual men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In today\u2019s world, in contrast, working has been transformed from a means to an end. Its counterpart, not called muse anymore but leisure, has seen the contradictory development from the purpose of working to a means to stay fit and healthy for work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this sense, the modern concept of \u201cwork-life balance\u201d is indeed not applicable for work in Antiquity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, given the development in the characteristics of work provoked by technological progress in the years to come, this may change profoundly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Human labour in the Fourth Industrial Revolution \u2013 Work 4.0 \u2013 will be largely assisted by artificial intelligence and intelligent, learning machines. Workers will need to develop an understanding of these systems as well as the willingness to cooperate with them or even integrate them into their teams. They will also need to \u2018educate\u2019 their systems and enable them to autonomously solve tasks before eventually machines will manage and train other machines. This will present the need for substantial investments but will in the long run relieve companies from the pressure to recruit from a decreasing number of specialists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, while AI and its possibilities are unprecedented in human history, the integration of non-human, yet intelligent entities into production, education and other business processes is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As described above, slaves in Antiquity had neither citizen nor any legal rights. Rather, Greek and Roman law defined them as objects owned by citizens. Acquiring a slave was a substantial investment but necessary for most as training them once and then being able to work with them in the long run was easier and cheaper than to look for skilled workers that could not be retained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As both the Greek polis economy and the Imperial Roman economy relied on slaves in any economic field, they were \u2013 in their terms \u2013 assisted by non-human, learning and partly self-managed intelligence that needed an initial investment but allowed them to emphasise muse over work without worrying about subsistence or economic well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The economy of the 21st<\/sup> century that Keynes imagined in 1930 was one in which humans were \u201cdeprived of [their] traditional purpose\u201d to work, money had lost its importance and advanced technologies secured economic prosperity for everyone. This image shares many similarities with the current future images that are based on the possibilities of AI, Quantum Computing and other technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this text, it has been hypothesised that the logics summarised under the terms work 1.0 to work 3.0 are neither a natural human state nor a historical constant. Instead, for a major part of human history working was a means to secure the basic of society. Once that was achieved, people committed themselves to more personal activities often linked to learning and self-development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has also been proposed that the distant past of human economy and production may inspire the future design of work. In Antiquity, societies relied on intelligent, learning slaves to allow their citizens a life characterised by economic security and the possibility to pursue political, social or philosophical activities. With slavery hopefully forever a thing of the past, after the Fourth Industrial Revolution societies will rely on intelligent, learning computer systems that will allow a growing number of people to work less or not at all. Establishing a new culture in which \u2013 like in Antiquity \u2013 working little and engaging in otiose activities seizes to be stigmatised as laziness may help unlock the full potential of this favourable situation and transition to a positive and more humane new economy like the one that Keynes and others imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This will only be possible, if political, economic, social, and cultural leaders cooperate to find new ways of establishing social security and easy options of acquiring new skills for everyone as demanded amongst others by the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum, 2018, p. 23).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ancient ideas may yield inspiration on how and why to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aristotle. (1932). Politics VI, XIV. Translated by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library 264.<\/em> Cambridge, M.A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arlt, H., & Zech, R. (2015). Arbeit und Mu\u00dfe. Ein Pl\u00e4doyer f\u00fcr den Abschied vom Arbeitskult.<\/em> Wiesbaden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Katz, M. (2017). Welcome to the Era of the AI Coworker.<\/em> Retrieved on November 01, 2018 from https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/welcome-to-the-era-of-the-ai-coworker\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keynes, J. M. (1930). Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren.<\/em> In: Essays in Persuasion (1932), pp. 358-373. Retrieved on October 20, 2018 from http:\/\/www.econ.yale.edu\/smith\/econ116a\/keynes1.pdf<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prell, M. (1997). Armut im antiken Rom.<\/em> Stuttgart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n von Reeden, S. (2016). Arbeit.<\/em> Retrieved on 01 October, 2018 from Der Neue Pauly: http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1163\/1574-9347_dnp_e131570<\/p>\n\n\n\n World Economic Forum. (2018). The Future of Jobs Report 2018.<\/em> Geneva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [i]<\/a> Ways of becoming a slave included being taken as bounty of by the victors of ways, being born by slaves or escaping debt by selling oneself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Work 0.0: Ancient Ideas on the Future of Work – Part II The Fourth Industrial Revolution will change the way humans work across the globe. A look back far into human history may help to find inspirations for designing these new ways of working. Was there no work before the First Industrial Revolution? In general,… Continue reading Was there no work before the 1st Industrial Revolution?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[15,20,19,17],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-futures","category-work","tag-4th-industrial-revolution","tag-antiquity","tag-future-of-work","tag-futures-studies","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/contingency-institute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Conclusion: What can we learn from ancient ideas of work for the future of work?<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
References<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n