We will become very efficient in a post-automation world—so ultra-efficient that we could put agents in all of our personal group chats.
But planning Friendsgiving in the group chat isn’t supposed to be efficient. My friends want superfluous banter and quasi-annoying repetition of who’s doing what, which then becomes further fodder for mocking the one person who overcommits on baking a pie from scratch and just ends up buying one from the store anyway. The inefficiency isn’t overhead on the relationship—it is the relationship. Humans wanna human.
The same is true in the workplace. Yes, humans can retreat to the high-value stuff after automation: judgment, taste, wisdom. Sure. But I think we’ll fight hardest to keep some of the messy, “low-value” parts, too. And we should. You can’t quite replace the collective “aww” that erupts when your colleague’s puppy wanders into frame on a video call. Skipping that meeting might’ve been more efficient. Being there was better (and cuter).
The same goes for not automating away the team standup where nothing truly gets decided, but you laugh a lot and learn something about each other. That kind of meeting will fuel you through the toughest days. So will venting about how nothing got decided in it.
We should keep protecting the mess on purpose. The tasks get automated. The banter, thankfully, doesn’t.
