Some Time
In The
Future

Available in paperback or Kindle via Amazon

" And indeed, in general it was astonishing how many professional jobs had been lost, as AI gradually re-shaped the economy. Hordes of engineers and (as we have seen) architects were no longer required. AI had totally revolutionised medicine, so that diagnosis was now carried out by interpretive programs which asked the patients questions, and which were far more effective than old-fashioned doctors.

AI had also reduced the need for highly-paid lawyers, as a lot of research could now be done electronically, sifting through evidence, or searching for legal precedents, through vast numbers of previous legal decisions. Stockbrokers too, had received their P45s, as computer programs started to take more and more decisions.

Many lower-level administrative posts had also gone. Huge swathes of the government's administrative machine had disappeared, as back-office functions had been digitised. So too in the immense supply and distribution chains of Amazon (which was still going strong) the numbers of people had fallen, as more and more tasks were taken over by machines.

And what about Dan? What had his job been? He'd been a journalist on 'Business Week', one of the most respected weekly business journals. But yet another algorithm from Avocado had done for him. It had been found that yet another app from Avocado called 'SmartNews' could trawl, discover and rank new business developments far better than any human. It could quite literally assess and assign a news value to every event recorded by Avocado's systems world-wide. It could then pick and pull any story, based on the relevance of that information to any given readership.

This system had two advantages. One was its incredible speed: it could find a story, then using writing skills as good as any human, get that story up on the Business Week site very quickly. The second advantage was cost. It could cover the work of an entire newsroom on its own, yet there was no on-going overhead at all, apart from an annual licence fee payable to Avocado.

And so Dan had joined the legions of educated middle class people who didn't have a job any more, and - looking at the way technology was moving - were unlikely ever to work again.

Naturally, all this had come as quite a shock to Dan. He had never - in his remotest dreams - thought when he was starting out in journalism that he might be replaced by an app from Avocado, but it had happened. And for a long time people like Dan had staggered around, mumbling as they received their pay-offs, that this couldn't be happening to them.

Of course, all this might not have been so bad if it hadn't been for the apparently random nature of the job losses. For while it was true that consulting engineers, journalists and lawyers had been laid off in droves, there was still a thriving retail sector, with numerous coffee bars employing baristas and waitresses, and even traditional pubs employing bar-tenders.

Meanwhile commercial aircraft no longer needed pilots of course; however it was found that passengers were unwilling to fly unless someone in a blue suit with gold braid on his sleeves was sitting in the cockpit (although he didn't have anything to do, and was far less good at flying the plane than the software which was actually doing it).

Politicians had also survived, and perhaps predictably were doing very well, both nationally and locally. Estate agents were also still about, although their numbers were declining.

The high street banks had of course disappeared (along with all those jobs) as banking became virtual; and all the virtual banks in turn had became part of Avocado Bank, the only bank which still existed.

The police of course were still going strong, as were BBC radio announcers, although it would have been possible to replace them with voice synthesis. (It was felt the public preferred the genuine mistakes, coughs and asides of a real person, as opposed to the simulated ones of an Avocado app.)

And so everywhere you looked jobs had been lost. Yet there had been no decrease in the quality of the services which were being delivered. Stories got by the 'SmartNews' app had been checked for accuracy many times, and always had been found to be correct. Buildings designed by 'SmartBuild' looked as good - or better - than buildings designed by humans. Self-operated trains, run by a giant control system without a single human in it, ran more smoothly than when humans were involved. Medical outcomes were far better than they had ever been, once computers took over diagnosis. Goods ordered from Amazon's giant delivery system arrived within the hour – or you got your money back.

Wherever you looked, at whatever sector you were interested in, artificially intelligent programs had increased efficiency and quality, and freed humans from many difficult and demanding jobs.

But what then, were all these unemployed people to do? Many of them with professional qualifications? How were they to survive?

The answer was that the government had brought in a minimum guaranteed income, for every adult in the country. This was not a great amount of money. In fact, it was only just enough for you to survive. Really of course it was the dole, old-fashioned unemployment benefit, but it was enough to prevent absolute poverty, and provided you stayed away from bars and husbanded your money carefully, you could get by.

And so now roughly half the population were without work, and living on the dole. An army of formerly well-paid professionals, ordinary workers and people whose jobs were susceptible to digitisation found themselves sitting at home wondering what to do.

But they didn't sit there for long. Oh no. It wasn't long before the natural ingenuity of man came to the rescue. Many of these engineers and pathologists took up carpentry or metalwork in an explosion of crafting, which created an immense quantity of beautiful, hand-made candle holders, tables, carved products of all kinds, much of the highest quality, and a great deal sold on e-bay, one of the few other giant tech corporations apart from Avocado to survive.

People learned to supplant their minimum guaranteed income in a thousand different ways. Some wove beautiful embroidered duvet covers; others produced yarns of wool collected from sheep on smallholdings; others specialised in pewter, or basket weaving, in a revival of cottage industries not seen in hundreds of years.

Others took to crofting, or working smallholdings. Others tended allotments (you could actually live on your allotment now; the rules had been changed.) Still others took second, third or fourth degrees at university, returning to campuses once more, to write that thesis that they never could have done as an undergraduate.

Still others started coffee bars (there were a lot of coffee bars) or one of the many artisan shops which had sprung up. Thus there was a new wave of boulangeries, charcuteries, pizzerias, specialist cafes and restaurants producing superb fare of all varieties, catering for those lucky enough to still have a job. "