“It seemed very fresh to me—I mean that part where you say how the First Industrial Revolution devalued muscle work, then the second one devalued routine mental work. I was fascinated.” […]
“Do you suppose there’ll be a Third Industrial Revolution?”
Paul paused in his office doorway. “A third one? What would that be like?”
“I don’t know exactly. The first and second ones must have been sort of inconceivable at one time.”“To the people who were going to be replaced by machines, maybe. A third one, eh? In a way, I guess the third one’s been going on for some time, if you mean thinking machines. That would be the third revolution, I guess—machines that devaluate human thinking. […]”
“Uh-huh,” said Katharine thoughtfully. She rattled a pencil between her teeth. “First the muscle work, then the routine work, then, maybe, the real brainwork.”
“I hope I’m not around long enough to see that final step.”
(From Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano. I enjoy reading it very, very much right now.)