Work, trades and responsibility

Machines perform most routine physical labour in 2497. Robots clean, carry, harvest, manufacture, install and repair. Licensed tools handle much routine administration and analysis. Many earlier occupations have disappeared, while others employ fewer people.

People still work because machines need purposes, their results need judgment, and someone must answer for what is done.

Trades

Trades survive as skilled professions. A plumber’s machines find a leak, open the wall and replace the pipe. The plumber decides whether the diagnosis is right, chooses the repair, checks the result and explains it to the customer.

A human or Raised person signs off the work and takes responsibility for what they approve. Where several people share a job, each answers for their part. Machine reports and tests support that judgment.

The physical work has largely been replaced; the responsibility has not.

Approval must be meaningful. The person responsible has authority to stop work, reject a result and require repairs. They approve a completed job or a defined stage, rather than every movement of a machine.

Training includes practical work, and qualification requires people to show that they understand the task without assistance. In ordinary work they use their equipment. Unassisted practice prepares them to recognise failure and act when the equipment cannot.

Ordinary professional approval belongs to the job. A project large enough to fall under the Slow Lane also requires the relevant signing office. Those offices remain citizen-only, with the existing restrictions on particular posts.

People and machines at work

Much employment falls into three overlapping groups:

• Keeping things working: buildings, farms, water systems, transport, factories and habitats.
• Working with people: teaching, medicine, care, hospitality, counselling and mediation.
• Making and organising: research, design, performance, craft, business and public administration.

A restaurant may have machines preparing most meals, people welcoming guests, and a cook whose unassisted work commands a premium. A repair business may employ only a few people while operating dozens of machines. A clinic’s systems may perform much of a treatment while its practitioners judge the case and remain responsible for the care.

Non-sentient robots are equipment. A Raised colleague is a person: an employee, partner, owner or customer, with interests beyond the task.

Handmade work remains important in provenance culture. Some people choose to perform physical work themselves, for pleasure, prestige or the value customers place on their hand.

Residents and opportunity

Adults who have not passed the Threshold retain the ordinary civil and economic rights of citizens. They may use assistants, own businesses, accumulate wealth, form families and pursue their interests.

They cannot vote, enter official higher education or hold signing offices. Second Schooling remains available to help them pass the Threshold.

Prospective employers may not demand proof of citizenship. They may require relevant qualifications, however, and university education opens careers unavailable through other official routes. Failing the Threshold is therefore a large impediment to success even where direct discrimination is forbidden.

Apprenticeship, practical skill, reputation and business ownership provide other routes. There are wealthy residents. A resident may own a repair firm employing university-trained citizens, become a celebrated craftsperson or build a successful trading business. Wealth does not grant the vote.

Life beyond employment

In the Settlement, essentials do not depend on having a job. People spend periods raising children, studying, caring for relatives, making things or recovering from illness. Paid work may be one part of a long life rather than its uninterrupted centre.

Work still brings status, money, friendship and a sense of being useful. People argue about who contributes, whose skill deserves respect and who lets machines do too much. The old fear of the Hollowing gives those arguments unusual force.

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See also: Economy · Everyday technology · Culture · Politics · The Settlement