Reimagining Value in an Automated World
For most of human history, work was inseparable from the rhythms of nature. People rose with the sun, tended the land, gathered, hunted, and lived in close relationship with the ecosystems around them. Survival depended on shared effort, and knowledge was passed through generations by doing. Labour was communal, seasonal, and deeply embedded in culture. This was the era of subsistence and stewardship.
๐Hunter-Gatherer Culture
Then came the agricultural revolution, and with it, the slow shift toward surplus. As communities settled, specialisation emerged. Some grew food, others built, others governed. Over time, the relationship between people and land was interrupted by ownership, hierarchy, and productivity. Work became more defined, more rigid, and gradually more detached from meaning.
๐Neolithic Revolution
The Industrial Revolution accelerated this disconnection. Suddenly, time was money. People moved from fields to factories, from families to clock punches. The rhythm of nature was replaced by the rhythm of machines. Productivity surged, but so did alienation. Labour became repetitive. Towns grew around mills and mines. And the job, not the land, not the whฤnau, not the craft, became the primary source of identity.
๐Marx’s theory of alienation
The 20th century brought another shift: the rise of the office, of bureaucracy, of paperwork and process. The dream of upward mobility was sold through careers and salaries. Schooling was restructured to train workers, not thinkers. And for a while, it worked. Jobs gave people stability, purpose, and income.
๐Progressive Era
But that world is now dissolving.
Automation and AI are eliminating not only manual and repetitive jobs, but also complex office-based roles. Factory work, data entry, logistics, design, scheduling, even law and medicine, no sector is untouched. What was once unthinkable is now accelerating: the unravelling of employment itself as the primary way people earn, belong, and contribute.
This is not a glitch. It is the system working as designed, but at a scale that makes it obsolete. Traditional employment is no longer capable of offering widespread financial security, social inclusion, or meaning. We must now decouple survival, identity, and contribution from the job.
๐Post-work society
๐Is AI Coming for Our Jobs? Rethinking the Future of Work and Inclusion | Emerald Insight
Many are searching for ways to monetise AI, but I believe the real significance of AI and automation isnโt about creating more wealth โ itโs about dramatically reducing, and eventually eliminating, the cost of human labour.
๐Global bean counters are struggling to find value for money in anything AI, and that is a big, big problem
As technologies like autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots become fully integrated into society, human input in production and services becomes largely redundant. The cost of goods and services then shifts to a single factor: the energy required to produce and maintain them.
Eventually, even that cost approaches zero. Renewable sources like solar and wind will generate more energy than is needed to build and sustain themselves. Nature already operates this way โ photosynthesis captures sunlight to drive growth and sustain life, creating vast forests with no external input. AI and automation simply mimic this principle at a societal scale.
So what happens now?
This is where EarthGrids steps in. It does not mourn the end of the job โ it prepares for what comes after. EarthGrids imagines a world where contribution matters more than employment. Where care, creativity, and stewardship are recognised as valuable. Where hosting a sensor that monitors water levels, or recording local knowledge that protects a forest, is seen not as an extra, but as essential.
In the EarthGrids model, people are not workers in a system, they are participants in a living network. Their contributions, to place, to data, to one another, are recorded, recognised, and rewarded. The system honours their presence, not just their productivity.
EarthGrids reshapes the very meaning of work. It redefines it as contribution, the act of caring for land, data, people, and systems. Guardianship, or kaitiakitanga, becomes a measurable economic activity. Proof of service, through nodes, sensors, content, and participation, replaces the outdated metric of hours worked. Tokens are not compensation, but recognition, circulating value within and between communities.
While machines handle the mechanical, EarthGrids invests in what only people can do: the work of care, wisdom, repair, and relationship. This includes ecological restoration, disaster resilience, storytelling and place-based knowledge, and community wellbeing. These tasks do not fit into the old economy, but they become central in the new one.
And critically, EarthGrids creates economic inclusion without the need for jobs. People can earn not through employment, but by contributing to a shared network. Hosting or maintaining nodes, uploading verified environmental or cultural data, participating in AI moderation, or sharing stories tied to land โ all of these are ways to generate income within EarthGrids.
This is an economy where people are valued not for where they work, but for how they contribute. Not for their compliance, but for their care.
At its core, EarthGrids supports distributed, sovereign economies. Infrastructure is community-owned. Data is not extracted but provisioned. Insights are not locked away but returned to those who generate them. Tokens circulate locally, creating circular economies in places long abandoned by global systems.
This is not about preserving dying systems. It is about building something that fits the world we live in now โ and the one we hope to live in tomorrow.
EarthGrids isnโt about creating jobs. Itโs about creating a system where people are rewarded for caring, connecting, and contributing to each other and the world around them.