The World in 2030

256 The World in 2030
But although Kurt Vonnegut made it clear in his book
that people were unhappy because they had not yet adapted
to a life without work, pundits and journalists seized on
his top-line ideas and regurgitated them over the next two
decades without any such qualification.
Their predictions have been proved wrong, as we all
know now from our own experience. As Tom Forester, Senior
Lecturer, School of Computing & Information Technology,
Griffith University, Australia points out:
The vast majority who are in the workforce appear
to be working harder than ever. There is very little
sign of the ‘leisure’ society having arrived yet! According
to one survey, the amount of leisure time
enjoyed by the average US citizen shrunk by a staggering
37 per cent between 1973 and 1989. Over the
same period, the average working week, including
travel-to-work time, grew from under 41 hours to
nearly 47 hours – a far cry from the 22 hours someone
predicted in 1967! 476
The element missing from those predictions about a coming
leisure society is the human need to work, to contribute,
for a person to constantly improve his or her own lot, and
that of the family. Even when substantial wealth has been
amassed most people continue in some form of work. This
is not greed; it is the evolutionary imperative that ensures
the survival of the human species.
As the Danish futurist Rolf Jensen puts it in ‘The Dream
Society’: