Futures of Digital Work: Paul Graham Raven

For some of us, AI technology is a concerning development and we’ve all probably imagined some dystopian future connected to it. The short story “Village people'' tells the story of an optimistic technological future where Sweden has become a techno-socialist society with “citizens' salaries” and “universal basic services.” Yet the story is also filled with a bittersweet longing for something that has been lost in the transition towards technological optimisation.
In the story, as read here by the author Paul Graham Raven, Svante, the protagonist of the story, perfectly represents the potential of AI to help society while at the same time revealing the perils of becoming fully dependent on it. Svante is a dancer who was forced to work in construction due to the lack of money in his practice. On the job he gets into an accident which paralyses him and takes away his ability to dance for good. That is until technology allows him to dance again. Svante is outfitted with an AI-powered exoskeleton which allows him to live an independent life, yet he observes that the technology resembles a cage to many people including himself at first.
Paul Graham Raven works as a researcher and critical futures consultant in addition to writing. Similar to his protagonist, Paul is also experiencing a violent force which is affecting his ability to do his art. But unlike in Svante’s case, it's not a sudden accident but a slower and more complex process of being replaced by technology. “I know that AI will never be able to write with the same quality that I can, yet I am not sure that people in power positions will be able to tell this difference.” Paul explained in a dialogue after his reading. “Village people” also deals with the physical experience as being something central to human existence. Each character has some kind of physical expression of themselves. For the writer of the story, this is something vital to the writing process “Writing is a physical experience, I will never stop writing by hand”.