Passage 1
In a little while the mere absence of occupation for so great a multitude of people everywhere became an evident social danger, and the government was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative work in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles, fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale to keep the less adaptable out of mischief, and of paying wages to the younger adults for attendance at schools that would equip them to use the new atomic machinery.... So quite insensibly the council drifted into a complete reorganisation of urban and industrial life, and indeed of the entire social system. Ideas that are unhampered by political intrigue or financial considerations have a sweeping way with them, and before a year was out the records of the council show clearly that it was rising to its enormous opportunity, and partly through its own direct control and partly through a series of specific committees, it was planning a new common social order for the entire population of the earth.
Labour and mechanizationGovernment, measurement, and surveillanceProgress and declinehuman institutions · advancesdependence · considersgovern · advancesEconomic and material powerCharacter and human developmentConsequences and welfareConditional or mixed
The passage presents technological unemployment as a social danger and describes a government-led reorganization of work, education, and urban life. It treats centralized planning as a response to unequal economic conditions, while leaving the effects on human autonomy mixed: people gain education and material security, but their occupations and social arrangements become increasingly directed by institutions.
Local word range 48636–49060