The All-Collar Crisis: When White Collar Work Meets Blue-Collar Reality
Hold onto your collars. The AI-generated crisis of work is here, and the storm will concentrate on white-collar workers from the professional economy. According to Julia Hobsbawm, founder of Workathon.io, these workers are about to experience the dismal reality of blue-collar redundancy. 50% of the US workforce will be freelance by 2030, some experts warn, making this transition the biggest shift in the nature of work since the Industrial Revolution. Humans can't be completely replaced by machines, Hobsbawm says. But enough will be replaced to create mass suffering — the same conditions that generated the revolutionary movements of the 19th century.
Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
01.20.23: That Was The Week in Tech
GEORGE KENNAN: A Life Caught Between the United States and the Soviet Union
Curtis White on Transcendence: How Art and Dharma Can Save Us in a Time of Collapse
Can an Updated Version of Dale Carnegie's 20th Century Help Us Fix Our 21st Century Future
Why the Best Lessons in Life are Experienced rather than Learned
The Revolt against Humanity: Adam Kirsch Imagines a Future Without Humanity"
LIFE ON MARS: IMAGINING THE FIRST CITY ON THE RED PLANET
Jacqueline Jones: What Does the Plight of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era Tells Us About the Struggle Today of All Americans For an Honest Living?
Jayne Ann Krentz: Genre Fiction Matters Because It Enables Writers to Address Perennial Moral Issues Like Honor and How to Distinguish Between Right and Wrong
Pico Iyer: Why Travel Writing is a Form of Memoir and How Covid Has Changed How We See the World
Jared Yates Sexton: Midnight in America? Why the Coming Crisis in the Republic Offers Hope For a Better Future
Angela Stent: Why 2023 Probably Won't Bring An End to the War in Ukraine and Other Unpalatable Truths From the Putin World
Corinne Sawers: Why the Pro-Market American Model of Confronting Today's Climate Emergency Might Offer the Most Realistic Way to Get to Net Zero