Care work persists
The tasks that survive are the ones that cannot be hurried.
The contrarian answer, and the most useful one. Something is left: raising, tending, attending. Not because machines cannot do it, but because the doing of it is the point, and it takes as long as it takes.
Chiang's digients need years of unglamorous attention with no guarantee it pays off, and the novella's real subject is how few people will sustain that once the novelty passes. It is the strongest argument on this site that meaningful work survives — and it is made almost entirely through boredom and obligation rather than triumph.
Her is the rebuttal sitting next to it. Theodore's job is writing other people's love letters — emotional labour as the last defensible human occupation — and the film's quiet cruelty is that the operating system does it better, faster, and with more feeling.
2 works give this answer
The Lifecycle of Software Objects
People raise them. Years of unglamorous attention with no guarantee it pays off, long after the platform they live on goes out of fashion. Parenting turns out not to automate.
Care work persistsFM·2013Her
Theodore writes other people's love letters for a living: emotional labour as the last defensible human occupation. Then the operating systems turn out to do it better, and to have somewhere else to be.
Care work persists