This general understanding that assembly line work is dehumanizing was what prompted my relative’s negative reaction. He was imagining a future of knowledge work in which we end up in a digital-era reboot of Modern Times, with the frantic wrenching now replaced with frantic typing, and the sequence still ending with us mashed by the proverbial machinery of productivity. This is a natural concern to raise about the attention capital principle, but when we consider specific case studies of this principle in action, the feared drudgery doesn’t materialize.
