Dick
“Men lived in cities, which were demolished in the war. Companies, which were protected, survived. Officials of these Companies became the government. The war lasted for a long time. Everything of value was destroyed. What you have left is a burned-out shell.” The robot was silent for a moment and then continued. “The first robot was built in 1979. By 2000 all routine work was done by robots. Human beings were free to do what they wanted. Art, science, entertainment, whatever they liked.”
“What is art?” Applequist asked.
“Creative work, directed toward realization of an internal standard. The whole population of the earth was free to expand culturally. Robots maintained the world; man enjoyed it.”
This is from “To Serve the Master,” written in 1956 by Philip K. Dick, one of my favorites.
Some more from this short story:
“You say men lived in cities,” Applequist plunged in eagerly. “Robots did the work?”
“Robots did the routine labor needed to maintain the industrial system. Humans had leisure to enjoy whatever they wanted. We were glad to do their work for them.”
“What happened? What went wrong?”
The robot accepted the pencil and paper; as it talked it carefully wrote down figures. “There was a fanatic group of humans. A religious organization. They claimed that God intended man to work by the sweat of his brow. They wanted robots scrapped and men put back in the factories to slave away at routine tasks.”
“But why?”
“They claimed work was spiritually ennobling. […] Men separated in two factions. The Moralists and the Leisurists. They fought each other for years, while we stood on the sidelines waiting to know our fate. I couldn’t believe the Moralists would win out over reason and common sense. But they did.”
Damn Moralists. Always screwing things up for the rest of us.
