Oscar Wilde On The Future Of Machinery

[This post was inspired by Haz's blog post and discussion in the comments here]

Oscar Wilde wrote in his essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism:"

Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure – which, and not labour, is the aim of man – or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

Wilde was writing in 1891, at a time when slavery had been abolished in most of the Western world. Yet there certainly were "wage slaves" then and still are. The American Progressive movement really began to take off around that time (1892).  Make what you will of Wilde's thoughts on slavery -- it's been widely quoted -- I was more interested in his take on machinery ownership.

Thomas Jefferson had a different take on property ownership when it came to machines. He set up our current patent system, rewarding inventors with an exclusive right to exclude others for a fixed term in exchange for full disclosure of the invention. This was a brilliant compromise -- among other things Jefferson invented. But we've lost sight of half of the bargain. Or I should say the average person has lost sight of it.

I saw a blog post somewhere a couple weeks ago regarding works of copyrighted art which have entered the public domain. Shouldn't there be a regular announcement of cool inventions you can now use free and clear? Even if they never became commercially successful? Certainly generic drug manufacturers are aware of such patent term expirations. Every week detailed plans and diagrams enter the public domain after their patent terms expire.