“The chief product of an automated society is a widespread and deepening sense of boredom.”

“In no sense are the robot dogs, automated vacuum cleaners and old-folks lifting machines just examples of yet another consumer society with nothing meaningful left to spend its disposable income on. No, robots are the future. They have been for generations.”

“There is a widespread sense of loss here, if not always of God, then at least of meaning.”

“Here lies the present paradox: work has totally triumphed over all other ways of existing, at the very moment when workers have become superfluous. Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanisation, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labour necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore the lack from which they are supposed to distract us.”

“They were a society whose chief vocations were to entertain and be entertained ...”

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”