Technological unemployment — the fear that machines will take human jobs — has existed since the Luddite uprisings of 1811. What's strange is that the fear has always been right about specific jobs and catastrophically wrong about aggregate work. The economist who explained this most precisely wasn't a modern futurist but the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who argued in 'Democracy and Education' that the meaning of work doesn't come from the task itself but from the social transaction surrounding it — the negotiation of purpose, the peer accountability, the felt sense of contributing to something larger. Dewey's insight reframes the current AI anxiety entirely: the threat isn't that AI replaces tasks, it's that AI can sever those social transactions while technically leaving 'the job' intact. A knowledge worker whose judgment calls are overridden by a recommendation engine still has a title and a salary — but Dewey would say they've lost the work. The practical question for anyone building or managing in a technology context isn't 'which tasks will be automated' but 'which social transactions are we dismantling without noticing' — because the hollowed-out job is harder to see than the eliminated one, and probably more dangerous to both people and organizations.

In the last month, which decision in your work got handed to an algorithm or a process — and what conversation stopped happening as a result?

Drawing from American Pragmatism — John Dewey