In a world where increasing amounts of automation is slowly but surely dwindling away available jobs in the market, Steemit could offer a safe haven for humans to work and provide value after basic income becomes reality.
How? Let me explain
What we all are witnessing is start of a revolution, the last huge one - Industrial Revolution, had two major focusing points: Labor and control of the means of production.
In today's world needs for labor are starting to be satisfied with all sorts of automation and we all know the trend is just starting. As we can already see, robots are now walking out of factory lines to our everyday life and at some point in the future the mail will be handed to you by a walking robot (Bender from Futurama?) and calls in help center
will be answered by AI. But as humans are no longer needed for these kinds of tasks, how do we fulfill our need to do something of value, to fulfill ourselves?
We have to think what differs us from the robotics and computers and what comes first to my mind is emotions.
(One of these gentlemen is a robot, in future it will be harder to spot the difference)
Emotion, in everyday speech, is any relatively brief conscious experience characterized by intense mental activity and a high degree of pleasure or displeasure.
Emotions, we all have them
This is where we have the edge over computers, this is what separates machines from the living and that is the place where we can provide value in future and get paid for it.
I admit, for one, that I can get very emotional when I watch movies. I have a thing for empathy, sniff. Writing this I remember seeing the fault in our stars and how it reminded me of my sisters struggles as she was born with a fault in her heart. I've never gave much of a thought for that, as I was myself young at time, but while watching this movie I was thinking about my sisters struggles truly for the first time and my eyes were like clouds in rainy day, how lucky I was to have my sister survive all that!
This is a feeling, connection, that makes me stand out from all the algorithms that are starting to service people around the world and other people can give a value to it as they make connections of their own.
Sure, computer can categorize things as sad or happy if certain words can be found inside a post, but I have a feeling that we'll have an edge over emotional space for years to come. This is a feeling a computer couldn't have. And this is why Steemit can provide a workplace for humans in future after basic income comes reality. Posting, curating and commenting is providing a value, each on their own way, and the best content will be rewarded handsomely as userbase grows.
Means of production in the hands of few, not anymore!
Back then factories were expensive to set up and means of distributing the goods were not cheap either. You needed some serious cash or connections to get even started! We can't also forget the importance of marketing - how is consumer going to buy your product if he isn't aware of your products existence? This is not cheap either.
And if you wanted to reach audience where your thoughts were the product you had to deal with big media companies, when there were no internet the things were really rough. How could you have a possibility of reaching millions of people?
Now we have 3D-printers that are now enabling people to build and design their own products. People are already building houses with them and some use these to build more printers! Printception! Imagine the day when everyone will have printer in their home and internet is full of designs to print, just one click away! So production of physical goods will be in hands of everyone soon!
But what about thoughts? Intellectual property
If you wanted to reach millions of people on your own, which is now possible, you would have hard time getting heard. This is where I think Steemit has had it's moment of genius. If you were to use Steemit as an platform to give voice to yourself, you can count on curators to find you eventually and strengthen that voice of yours.
As we can see the future is promising us abundance of products in both physical and virtual space. It's up to us to shape it by our own actions and get rewarded for it.
If you share my view on what the future has coming for us, you might want to start honing your steemit-skills, who knows what kinds of connections will you make.