Techno-utopia.
There will be no jobs in the future as it will all be automated.
I've done lots of thinking on this in the past, and I've come up with the conclusion that it just ain't gonna work that way. You can advance technology to a point where many jobs can be eliminated, but it would be virtually impossible to eliminate all of them. There are also other problems. Here's what I came up with.
1. Some jobs machines can't do: Unless you can make a machine that is as intelligent or moreso than humans, there will always be jobs that require humans doing them. Let's go for a few examples. First, politics - can you have a machine determine the laws? Can the machine really understand how humans are and how they are affected by the laws? Probably not - you'll need human lawmakers. How about psychologists? Once again you need an understanding of the human mind, something it would be difficult to make a machine do. What about scientific research? Another area that likely requires humans - machines have to be programmed, and the programmer has to have understanding, unless you can make a machine that can learn concepts outside of it's programming you can't replace humans here. What about video game makers? Once again, takes someone who understands the human mind, who can understand what's cool and not cool, fun and not. There are so many other jobs out there that you'd be hard pressed to replace with a machine.
1 1/2. Those who don't have jobs obviously will get fed by the machines, but what's the incentive for the guys who still have to work? They better receive something extra - of course, it isn't communism then, is it?
2. A commitment to mediocrity: Let's say for the sake of argument that somehow we do fill all the jobs, every one of them, with machines. So now what? What use are humans? We no longer need to do anything but relax. Would there be a point in educating us? Not really, there's no point - the machines do everything for us, we'd have no reason to apply knowledge, so all anyone would ever need to know is how to get what they need from the machines. Seems like a boring existence - someone might get bored and make some bombs, go blow some people up. With nothing to challenge us, I think we'd go insane.
3. Stagnation: Unless you can make a researcher machine, quality will never increase. Nothing will ever get better - and believe me it always can, anyone who tells you otherwise is a quitter. The machines will produce the same stuff, no change at all. There'd be no incentive to introduce new products, because all needs would be met, so what'd be the point of doing all the work in inventing something?
4. Dependence: The human race would be completely and utterly dependent on the machines. If something happened, perhaps some terrorist lunatic out to destroy society succeeding, that resulted in the shutdown of the machines could you even begin to imagine what would happen? Mass starvation, chaos, war over resources, a new dark age.
So, I'm no fan of technological utopia, as it's a rather inhuman system.
