Sleepers, Wake!: Technology and the Future of Work

Science and technology have changed the quality, length and direction of life in the past century far more than politics, education, ideology or religion. Edison and Ford have shaped human experience more broadly and enduringly than Lenin and Hitler.

Technologically advanced nations are currently passing through one of the four most important eras of change in human history – a Post-Industrial or ‘Information’ Revolution, occurring in a global economy, created by technology of unprecedented capacity. Nations, regions and people face unique threats and opportunities.

The gap between the speed, capacity and pervasiveness of technological change and sluggish social, cultural and political responses poses acute new problems. Governments and citizens are the sleepers who, like Rip van Winkle, wake to find themselves ill-equipped to cope with a changed reality.

First published in 1982, SLEEPERS, WAKE! has become a classic, reprinted fifteen times, and selling over 60,000 copies. It has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish and braille.

SLEEPERS, WAKE! examines the historic contraction of manufacturing as an employer and the rise of service employment, especially in ‘information’ and quasi-domestic services. SLEEPERS, WAKE! makes a controversial analysis of the problems and outlines a political programme to ensure that society can get the best, and not the worst, out of the technological revolution.