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There is No Alternative: Doctor Who, "Kerblam!", and the Specter of Technological Unemployment

There is No Alternative: Doctor Who, "Kerblam!", and the Specter of Technological Unemployment

Released Sunday, 29th March 2020
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There is No Alternative: Doctor Who, "Kerblam!", and the Specter of Technological Unemployment

There is No Alternative: Doctor Who, "Kerblam!", and the Specter of Technological Unemployment

There is No Alternative: Doctor Who, "Kerblam!", and the Specter of Technological Unemployment

There is No Alternative: Doctor Who, "Kerblam!", and the Specter of Technological Unemployment

Sunday, 29th March 2020
Good episode? Give it some love!
Rate Episode

In the 2018 Doctor Who episode “Kerblam!”, something is killing workers off at a far future Amazon analogue. Is it Capitalism? Or is the system not the problem? In this episode, Doctor Who is used as a lens to understand the history of technological unemployment and what it means for our automated future.

Bibliography and Further Reading   Who Were the Luddites from History.com: https://www.history.com/news/who-were-the-luddites   Article in the Guardian about Doctor Who’s Issues with ‘Wokeness’: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jan/08/doctor-who-more-offensive-than-ever-jodie-whittaker-pc   Article on CNBC about McKinsey & Company’s report about automation: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/one-third-of-us-workers-could-be-jobless-by-2030-due-to-automation.html   Article on Quartz abou technological unemployment including description of the White House report: https://qz.com/895681/silicon-valley-is-right-our-jobs-are-already-disappearing-due-to-automation/   The White House report on Automation written in the Obama era: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF   Article about the Origins of the 40-hour Workweek: https://www.clockspot.com/blog/working-40-hour-week/   Article in the Guardian about Keynes and the workweek of the future: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics   Article in Vox about how the wealthy have taken all the productivity growth for themselves: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/piketty-saez-zucman-income-growth-inequality-stagnation-chart   Forbes article about Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/01/11/live-paycheck-to-paycheck-government-shutdown/#6d9e46404f10   Huffpost article about American being unable to afford an emergency: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/most-americans-cant-afford-to-pay-for-even-a-minor-emergency_n_5a68e67ae4b0022830090e5b   Forbes article about people using GoFundMe to cover healthcare costs: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolynmcclanahan/2018/08/13/using-gofundme-to-attack-health-care-costs/#30b08b6f2859   Information about Universal Basic Assets, an alternative to Universal Basic Income that gives people greater power over the means of production in addition to money: http://www.iftf.org/uba/   Wikipedia's article on Neoliberalism (not to be confused with American Liberalism or Classical Liberalism which are three different things): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism   Thatcher and the phrase "there's simply no alternative” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative

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