Peter Frase gives four answers to this question in Four Futures: Life After Capitalism. In all of these potential futures, automation is the constant; what changes is the political and ecological context – in other words, who owns the robots and how climate change affects the resources on which technology depends. The day after the robots arrive, Frase points out, capitalist class relations and a collapsing biosphere will still be with us. In the tradition of the finest science fiction, his futures feel plausible because they’re intensified versions of our present. This monopoly is maintained by owning not merely the robots, but the data that tells the robots how to do their job.

Source: The Guardian November 24, 2016 06:56 UTC