A common theme of dystopian science fiction is the enslavement of humanity by machines. Emma Goldman, an anarchist philosopher, also feared human servitude to the machines. In one of her essays on anarchism, she asserted that:

Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.

When Goldman was writing in the 1900s, the world had just entered the industrial age, and the technology of today was but a dream of visionary writers. The slavery she envisioned was not of robot masters ruling over humanity, but humans compelled to work long hours in factories, serving the machines to serve the human owners of these machines. That this is still applicable today needs no argument.

The labor movements of the 1900s helped reduce the extent of this servitude, at least in Western countries. As the rest of the world industrialized the story of servitude to the machine played out over and over. While the point of factory machines was to automate work so few could do the work of many, it is only recently that “true” automation has taken place, which is having machines doing the work instead of humans. For example, robots that assemble cars do what humans used to do. As another example, computers instead of human operators now handle phone calls.

In the eyes of utopians, this progress was supposed to free humans from tedious and dangerous work, allowing them freedom to engage in creative and rewarding labor. The reality is a dystopia. While automation has replaced humans in some tedious, low paying and dangerous jobs, automation has also replaced humans in what were once considered good jobs. Humans also continue to work in tedious, low paying and dangerous jobs because human labor is still cheaper or more effective than automation. For example, fast food chains do not use robots to prepare food. This is because cheap human labor is readily available. The dream that automation would free humanity remains a dream. Machines have mostly pushed humans out of jobs into other jobs, sometimes ones more suited for machines. If human well-being were considered important, this would not be happening.

Humans still work jobs like those condemned by Goldman. But, thanks to technology, humans are even more closely supervised and regulated by machines. For example, there is software designed to monitor employee productivity. As another example, some businesses use workplace cameras to watch employees. Obviously enough, these can be dismissed as not being enslaved by the machines and defenders would say it is good human resource management ensuring that human workers are operating efficiently. At the command of other humans, of course.

One technology that looks like servitude to the machine is warehouse picking, such as that done by Amazon. Employees. Amazon and other companies have automated some of the picking process, making use of robots in various tasks. But, while a robot might bring shelves to human workers, the humans are the ones picking the products for shipping. Since humans tend to have poor memories and get bored with picking, human pickers have been automated. They are told by computers what to do, then they tell the computers what they have done. That is, the machines are the masters, and humans are doing their bidding.

It is easy enough to argue that this sort of thing is not enslavement by machines. First, the computers controlling the humans are operating at the behest of the owners of Amazon who are (presumably) humans. Second, humans are paid for their labors and are not owned by the machines (or Amazon). As such, any enslavement of humans by machines is metaphorical.

Interestingly, the best case for human enslavement by machines can be made outside of the workplace. Many humans are now ruled by their smartphones and tablets, responding to every beep and buzz of their masters, ignoring those around them to attend to the demands of the device, and living lives revolving around the machine.

This can be easily dismissed as a metaphor. While humans are said to be addicted to their devices, they do not meet the definition of “slaves.” They willingly “obey” their devices and could turn them off. They are free to do as they want, they just do not want to disobey their devices. Humans are also not owned by their devices, rather they own their devices. But it is reasonable to consider that humans are in a form of bondage their devices have, by the design of other humans, seduced people into making them the focus of their attention and thus have become the masters.