Today, the century-old utopian dream of a future techno-paradise is within sight. The technologies of the information and communication revolution hold out the long-anticipated promise of a near-workerless world in the coming century. Ironically, the closer we seem to come to the technological fruition of the utopian dream, the more dystopian the future itself appears. That's because the forces of the marketplace continue to generate production and profit, with little thought of generating additional leisure for the millions of working people whose labor is being displaced. The high-tech Information Age is now on our doorsteps. Will its arrival lead to a dangerous replay of the operating assumptions of trickle-down technology, with continued emphasis on endless produc- tion, consumption, and work? Or will the high-tech revolution lead to the realization of the age-old utopian dream of substituting machines for human labor, finally freeing humanity to journey into a post-market era? This is the great issue at hand for a world struggling to make the transition into a new period of history.

— The end of work by Jeremy Rifkin (Page 56)