Shifting Cultural Norms?!

I am about 99.5% certain little or any of this idea rambling/bungling about in my brain is original, but I am genuinely surprised with how little airplay it is getting in either the mainstream media overwhelming my mind in one form or another from time to time or in the conversations I have with people on chairlifts and during runs through the Wasatch . . .

We are on the verge of a cultural-economic-technological shift that could/should fundamentally change our existence.  But where should I start: Is it worthwhile getting into how Zarathustra created a new religion meant to explain a fundamentally changing world effecting the people of Persia and their world-view? How a new economic system (shifting patterns of labor) forced the people of the time to reevaluate their ethical system and to find new values for a new world? Perhaps, it would suffice to mention in passing and/or discuss in brief how humanity may/may not have been changed by the development of agriculture?  How the early development of cities and various forms of urbanization through time may have changed the patterns of behavior between people(s)?  How about the Industrial Revolution and the rise of modern economic systems changing our relationship to both work and the family?  These various moments all marked fundamental shifts in how we "earned a living" and they resulted in shifting our cultural norms to value the new life being experienced.  I would suggest three eras in minimum: neolithic revolution, industrial age, and the computer era represent tidal shifts in economic systems of order and society that fundamentally brought into question our way of interacting with the world.  I am going to suggest that we may be on the verge of an even bigger shift, or perhaps what I am seeing as another shift is simply the continuation of the computer era, and we must figure out how to live within this new framework . . .  

As our world advances technologically, how will the way in which our society is ordered/structured change to truly take advantage of these new technologies? As more and more jobs -- from flipping burgers to playing doctor -- become simplified/done by using new technologies, how do we react? The question/problem has been here since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but we may be reaching a near revolutionary point in dealing with the answer to this question (or at least the scope of this question).  Typically, when a worker is replaced (or diminished) by technology the onus of the issue is put on the worker -- they are told to learn new skills and to get with the times.  Don't become outdated!  

But isn't this bassackwards . . . we have been reducing the amount of human labor needed to feed, shelter, and clothe ourselves; however, we are working as much (realistically more) than ever before and people don't want to become outdated -- they want to feel as if their work contributes to the functioning of society.  And ironically enough, we still can't seem to successfully feed and shelter ourselves -- we have a million jobs unrelated to survival and yet we aren't even surviving.  I would suggest instead that, we are addicted to the idea of work.  We are addicted to the idea that people need to work in order to earn a paycheck and that they need to earn a paycheck in order to feed themselves, in order to take care of themselves.  But if technology reduces the hours of human labor needed to make/satisfy the basic needs of life (food and shelter) available to people, then why are we working even more than in the past?  What happens if/when we get to the point that robots and other forms of technology can grow all of our food, build the vast majority of our products, and perhaps even build our shelters?  Do we keep living in the world of work?  Do we continue pretending that work is a must do activity?  Does work in fact continue to become a must happen activity?  Aren't there other possibilities?  More radical possibilities?  More helpful possibilities?  What if work became an activity of choice?  I want you to suspend for a second all the dreadful apocalyptic anti-capitalist notions this is probably throwing up in your mouth currently, and think about the irony of having created an economic-social structure dependent on work and all the sudden work isn't really necessary in nearly the amounts done previously.  How long do we continue pretending that the society we have built is the necessary order?  How long do we continue to pretend the work we are doing is necessary and requisite for our survival?

When do we start trying to figure out ways to take advantage of our advances and use them to our benefit, rather than as further chains to imprison us to the world of labor?  When do we start taking advantage of the potential for increased leisure/free time?  I should explain that increasing leisure/free time doesn't need to mean sloth -- in fact, my personal guess is that with time (perhaps a generation, perhaps a half-generation, perhaps a few months) reduced labor would actually mean increased individualized productivity.  Hell, maybe some people would even use their extra time to figure out how to benefit humanity -- not my plan, but I am guessing others might head this way . . . What would I do with an increased amount of leisure time, but the same basic standard of living? Ski more, run more, read more, hang out with my wife more . . . but that isn't the point -- the point is that we can as a society live with less work, but seem to be scared to death of the idea.  We have convinced ourselves that robots will come alive and kill us all, so we better just keep marching along pretending that we need to live in the manner of our ancestors (o.k. our parents and grandparents) . . .