Who taught you what to want?

There is a version of the post-work future that goes something like this: machines do most of the unpleasant work, we work far fewer hours, everyone has enough to live, and finally we are free to do what we want. I love this vision, I am just not sure the final five words are as simple as they sound.

What do we want? And where did those wants come from? None of us develops our desires in isolation. We grow up inside cultures, markets, class structures, gender roles, advertising systems, recommendation algorithms and ideas about what a successful life is supposed to look like. We learn what to aspire to long before anybody asks us whether those aspirations are actually ours.

The house. The career. The body. The lifestyle. The products. The experiences. The status. The visible proof that we are doing life correctly. AI makes this question even more interesting because the systems increasingly helping us decide what to read, watch, buy, listen to, visit and perhaps even think about are built by companies with an economic interest in shaping those decisions. So yes, I want the machines to take the drudgery. I want shorter working hours, material security, and people to have vastly more time that does not belong to an employer. But liberation cannot end with giving people free time inside a system that has spent decades learning how to manufacture their desires. Getting our time back is one question. Getting our imagination back might be another.