1°) Who is the author?
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) is a British science fiction writer whom you are surely familiar with through one of his most famous works, namely 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Scientist and inventor, he also worked on technological concepts, in particular geostationary communication satellites, the concept of which he originated.
2°) Context of the quote
From a temporal point of view, he is said to have made this quote for the first time in 1969 in a newspaper interview in relation to 2001: A Space Odyssey. He repeated it in another interview a few months later.
In terms of schools of thought, he belongs to the school of hard science fiction, which emphasizes scientific and technological plausibility and was convinced that technology would shape the future of humanity.
It should be borne in mind that Clarke was more of a techno-optimist, even a techno-utopian. He was indeed a great advocate of technological progress and was optimistic about the future of humanity, although some of his works show concern about how humanity would manage these advances.
Clarke, like other 20th-century thinkers, envisioned a time when machines would take over production, leaving humans free to devote themselves to creative and leisure activities, which he saw as a great step forward, even the goal of humanity.
In short :
- Arthur C. Clarke imagined a world without work, where technology would free humanity to devote itself to leisure and creativity.
- He saw this transformation as progress, with education and entertainment as the new central activities.
- This vision raises questions: how can we redistribute wealth, give meaning to life without work and avoid boredom?
- Today, AI and automation make this scenario more credible, but also pose challenges, particularly to our cognitive abilities.
- Clarke believed that this future would require a radical change in the economic system, a transformation for which there is still no clear answer.
3°) Explanation and implications
“The goal for the future is full unemployment, so we can play.”
Never in history has this sentence been so relevant (Will AI replace juniors? The false debate that’s only the tip of the iceberg) and anchored in current thinking, and it will be even more so in the future.
According to Clarke, the ideal of progress would not be to increase employment, but on the contrary to make it disappear thanks to technology. A vision that may have seemed appealing when it was science fiction and utopia, but which raises many questions now that it is a reality that we seem to be able to touch with our fingers.
- If work is no longer necessary, how can wealth be redistributed?
- Is chosen idleness always beneficial?
- How can we give meaning to life without the constraint of work?
In 2025, his thinking is in line with contemporary ideas on basic income and the place of artificial intelligence in the economy and society (The challenges posed by AI are not technological, but must be met today.).
4°) What lessons can we learn from this?
Clarke’s idea is based on the fact that one day technology will have eliminated work in the productive and constrained sense of the term. He is part of a historical trend in which each technological revolution has reduced the need for human labor in certain sectors, putting forward the idea that one day, instead of moving this labor from one sector to another, there will be no sectors left to transform and work will thus have disappeared.
Indeed, in a world where all repetitive and laborious tasks are performed by machines, full unemployment becomes a logical consequence of progress, but we should not believe that, in Clarke’s vision, this is the end of all human activity. Rather, it is a transition to occupations not constrained by economic necessity.
The question of wealth redistribution
This necessarily raises the question of wealth redistribution. The idea of a universal income (otherwise known as a technological dividend) often comes up in this debate. Some economists and philosophers propose that the wealth generated by automation be redistributed so that everyone can live with dignity without traditional employment (Towards a golden age of welfare and precariousness?).
Play as a driver of personal development
But, while this may seem appealing, we cannot ignore the dark side of such a prediction, especially when we realize that it may soon no longer be a utopia. Indeed, work has for centuries been a structuring element of human identity, and there is concern that its disappearance would pose psychological and social challenges
Can we then think that, as Clarke suggests, could play, in the broad sense, replace work as a driving force for personal development? Authors such as Johan Huizinga have preceded him in this field (Homo ludens) for whom “play is a serious task” that contributes to the development of culture and allows us to understand man beyond the dimensions of knowledge.
But that does not answer the question I am asking myself and that AI will ask us if we follow Clarke’s thinking: if play shapes man, what is it in a society where it is no longer a counterweight to work and the acquisition of knowledge as a means of acquiring skills that are sometimes useful at work but the sole activity of individuals with no other perspective?
Will education and entertainment dominate the world?
But if we take Clarke’s statement in its entirety, he completes this quote with two others, and here is the first.
“Education will become the largest single industry and entertainment a close second-or mankind would die of utter boredom in a workless world.”
It can already be said that these trends are nothing new: education in the broad sense is now worth around 6 trilliondollars, and is expected to grow to 10 trillion dollars by 2030. It is growing at an annual rate of 4.5%, or 1 to 1.5 times the growth of world GDP ([FR]Education, a changing market).
As for learning in business, it is supported by the fast pace of transformation we are experiencing and the facilities offered by e-learning. In France alone, overall spending on vocational training has increased dramatically, from 32 billion euros in 2014 to 55 billion euros in 2023 ([FR]business training expenditure has increased by 71% in 10 years).
As for the entertainment market, let’s not even talk about it: in constant growth, it reached 2.8 trillion dollars worldwide in 2023 (PWC: Global entertainment and media revenue continues to rise).
This would therefore suggest that Clarke’s prediction is well on its way to coming true, but all of this leaves me very skeptical.
There are people who learn both for professional purposes and for the pleasure of learning, of satisfying their curiosity, of cultivating themselves. And if you are reading this article, this is surely the case for you. But for many people, learning is a constraint that is justified only by a professional perspective, including studies.
I haven’t found any figures on the percentage of people for whom learning is an intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, but I’m afraid they don’t give us much reassurance about the future of humanity, especially since we are already seeing a decline in cognitive abilities among AI users ([FR]Declining Performance: the boomerang effect of AI in learning, Potential cognitive risks of generative transformer-based AI chatbots on higher order executive functions, and The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers).
It is therefore not surprising that search engines, which were discovery tools, are gradually being replaced by AIs, which are answer engines, completely changing our cognitive processes.
I therefore find it hard to believe that in a world where AI has eliminated work, there will be more stimuli to learn for the sake of learning when, in fact, many will be tempted to think that AI exempts them from it.
And as for talking about a world where we entertain ourselves without learning and without knowledge, I dare not imagine the level of entertainment on offer and what kind of future it would bring humanity (AI in the workplace: avoiding the Wall-E effect).
I would add that education and entertainment are not free and are already a strong marker of social inequalities, and I find it very hard to believe that a possible universal income would compensate for them, if not, since nobody works anymore, as part of a global and egalitarian redistribution of income. But that’s not utopia, it’s science fiction.
In any case, I’m not sure that Clarke’s vision promises us a world that rosy.
But just by saying that, he added something else.
The end of our political and economic system
“That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.”
Here we are. On the one hand, it is easy to say that in any case this system no longer holds much and I admit that this is a question that we will have to ask ourselves one day (The challenges posed by AI are not technological, but must be met today.) but it also marks the end of a social model without anyone today proposing anything viable in its place.
Bottom line
The prospect of a world without work and made up of leisure and culture may seem appealing at first glance, but it raises underlying problems that cannot be ignored, such as growing inequalities, a loss of bearings and disconnection from reality.
Of course, there are alternatives to the traditional work model, such as the creative economy, investment in community activities and continuing education, but are people really interested in these? And above all, would the appetite that exists today for these activities not disappear along with the work that sometimes provides an outlet for them?
It may be possible to build a better world without jobs, but there is no guarantee that it would be viable or that we would like it, and there is a risk that it would lead us to an irreversible situation and the disappearance of what makes us human.
But this future may not be so inevitable (AI and jobs: why I don’t believe in the “great replacement” of humans by machines) and that may be good news after all.
Image: Société des Loisirs by BlurryMe via Shutterstock
