Design fiction draws its inspiration from [the] weak signals of our everyday lives, such as innovations in new technologies or new cultural trends, and use extrapolation to build disruptive visions of society. Through challenging the status quo, this practice aims [to make us] question our current uses, norms, ethics or values.
In the future, we have automated everything except the care of others. Machines manage our food production, our heavy industry, even the most delicate of our medical procedures.
How did we get here? As the world marched ever closer to full automation, there arose an increasingly non-hypothetical question: will all jobs disappear? At first, the idea seemed utopic. We cheered when laundry folding—one of the most recalcitrant tasks for machines to master—became automated, and clapped with delight when a startup released a diaper changing robot. Goodbye and good riddance, we said.
But as automation encroached ever closer to the core of caring for another person, society paused and held its breath, waiting for what seemed like the inevitable.
Then, one person had the audacity to wonder: should care be automated? If we could remove the need for mothering, for tending to an elderly loved one, for taking care of the sick, should we?
Would it feel like we gained something or lost something?
Policy makers proposed we run studies designed to answer this question—who is better at raising children, taking care of the sick and elderly, giving love to our pets…us or the machines we birthed? We had already seen machines, to our surprise, deliver talk therapy with grace to patients with PTSD, so we had to be thorough in our analysis. It was too important a question to leave to chance.
It turns out these studies are very difficult to run—they require lengthy longitudinal design and nobody wanted to enroll their loved ones in the arm they believed would yield worse outcomes. So, for the first time in a very long time, society decided to make a decision on principle. It decided the care of others will never be automated.
Time passed, all other jobs have disappeared, but this one remains.
The most successful in our society are the most empathetic; in addition to classical academics, they spend their adolescent years developing love and compassion. Those who excel advance to the Masters track and graduate to find jobs in caregiving. They are compensated richly for this work.
Enough time has passed that the results of the decision are clear. The tone of policy has shifted on every dimension, from how we remedy recidivism to how we relate to other species. Our children have the lowest levels of anxiety in history. We’ve eradicated loneliness.
Caregiving is no longer a backbreaking, low-waged job. It is the only job. And it is the most important job in the world.