A couple decades back I read an article about robotics and mechanization which was particularly interesting.  It was not about the current technology, nor about the expectations for the future per se.  It was about the societal implications.

  The author thought it would not be more than a couple of generations before we reached a point in our society at which there was very little need for people to work.  His educated estimate was that once a full mechanization of all functions which could be mechanized had been achieved, ten percent of the available human work force could do one hundred percent of the work for which humans were required.  Ninety percent of the work force would be able to retire to a life of leisure.

  Before you applaud, this was not exactly what the article envisioned.  The prediction wasn’t exactly that we would all have lives of leisure; it was that most of us would be unemployed.  When machines do ninety percent of the work, there are no jobs for ninety percent of the people.  The author’s argument was that we needed to begin, right now, to establish a new system for the distribution of wealth.  Sometime in the century which we have now entered we may reach the point at which a very few people can make everything that anyone would ever buy and do everything anyone would need done, and that means most people will not have any source of income.  It is clear on reflection that the entire economy would collapse in such a situation; no one could buy anything but those who already had it, and those who could make it could not sell it.  Thus the article insisted that we find ways now to build society into something functional then.

  While that’s interesting, and perhaps some of you will pursue it (the article was in Omni magazine), I’m more interested in the aspect of social upheaval that lies below the surface.  It would seem necessary, if the future is to be anything other than bleak, that the ownership of industry must be spread among the people.  That is, if every factory is completely automated, then every unemployed factory worker must be paid through the sales of product produced by the machines which displaced him.  Worse than that, as each generation advances, somehow those payments have to extend to people who never worked, never bought or sold any stock in any company, never had any connection to any business.  It’s all well and good to suggest that as General Motors displaces workers with machines they must be given shares of the company profits to replace their paychecks.  My sons never worked for General Motors or any other major corporation; whence will come their paychecks in the new economy?  Thus I see on the horizon a time of social upheaval, a moment when the world is in transition from one foundation to another, when all the old ways are not merely challenged but ultimately devastated and replaced with new ways, when those currently in power are pulled down and replaced by new powers.  Perhaps we live in interesting times, as the ancient curse goes.  We certainly seem to be potentially on the cusp of major societal change.

  It calls to mind the Multiverser forum game in which I’m currently playing (here on the Official Multiverser Forum at Gaming Outpost).  I unexpectedly entered a medieval princedom ruled by a man out of time.  It became my job to modernize the legal system.  There is a rising middle class, what is still called a merchant class but which has clearly established itself as above the peasants and below the nobles.  The prince would not surrender all his power; but he would bring the beginnings of democracy to his people.  He has given the task to me, and I have begun to create a bicameral legislature which gives power to the nobles and the peasants jointly to create laws (subject to the disapproval of the prince).  Yet the nobles don’t see this as an increase in their authority, but as its dilution.  Several have expressed outrage and even, if I have correctly identified them, violent opposition to the notion of creating a House of Commons.  Again, they are interesting times, times of social change and societal upheaval, and I find myself working against problems on every side to bring about a peaceful transition from the old to the new.

  There are many moments in society in which such upheaval disrupts the world.  The rise of the Enlightenment on the coattails of the Reformation led to the belief among the intelligentsia of the age that they had inalienable rights, and from that to revolutions to break the powers of monarchies.  The Industrial Revolution changed the nature of cities drastically.  In every case, the old guard jealously defends that which it has unknowingly already lost, and the revolutionaries envision an unrealistic utopia perhaps mere days ahead if only everyone cooperates.  It is a disruption of the world, a time in which everything is in short order swept away and replaced by something untried, untested, unproved.  Transition means upheaval.

  These moments make wonderful settings for role playing games.  Even if initially you’re just headed on a simple dungeon crawl, to do it against the background of a shifting world is to have the possibilities for so much more pressing in from all sides.  The world is in flux; it is changing even now, and it ever has been.  Enjoy it, recreate it, place it behind the scene of your game world, and watch how it interacts with the characters.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.