The Future of Boredom

"In considering the future society, let us assume that 1)there will be no nuclear war; 2)the population will increase but not disastrously; and 3) the trend toward automation will continue. In that case, the kind of work that will be done in the future will tend to be more and more that of supervision of the machinery that does the real work...This means there will be more and more leisure in the world, and the leisure will have to be filled because doing nothing is a terrible chore and very painful for any mind above that of an idiot." - Isaac Asimov