Building a post-work utopia: Technological unemployment, life extension, and the future of human flourishing

Abstract

Populations in developed societies are rapidly aging: fertility rates are at all-time lows, while life expectancy creeps ever higher. This is triggering a social crisis in which shrinking youth populations are required to pay for the care and retirements of an aging majority. Some people argue that by extending the healthy and productive phases of life we can avoid this crisis (thereby securing a “longevity dividend”). This chapter argues that this longevity dividend is unlikely to be paid if lifespan extension coincides with rampant technological unemployment. This in turn leads to the argument that our vision of the extended life, post-work utopia, may need to be reconceived by prioritizing the role of games in the well–lived life.