Is this time different with the “Era of Abundance”?   A hundred years later, the rebirth of the “Technocracy” movement.

In 1919, William H. Smyth coined the term “Technocracy” asserting that as technological progress renders human labor unnecessary, humanity’s greatest endeavor would be how best to bask in leisure and prosperity.  Everyone would essentially be technologically unemployed, so how could we allocate the energy resources efficiently to each individual?  Of course, one all-powerful group of technologists would decide the allocation and means of production and distribution.

Examples were that one worker in 1932 could produce as much pig iron as 3,000 labor hours in 1840.  A hundred workers in 5 industrial plants could make as many bricks as 2,370 plants just 3 years before in 1929.

This time had become different, of course, so Technologists thought the economic and political system had become obsolete.

This is very similar to today, as the transitioning to robotics and Artificial Intelligence propagates new calls for an “Era of Abundance” where humanity’s greatest endeavor would be how to bask in leisure and prosperity.