Disconnecting Dishwashers
Automation of a human activity is an (unfortunately) fitting desire when the relationship underlying that activity is hidden away.
(Note: we are testing a new, more regular posting schedule on Monday / Wednesday / Friday with more design critiques and design proposals. Philosophy and theology will still be present as before.)
L.M. Sacasas, author of The Convivial Society, recently gave a reply to a timely aphorism that I hear is floating around social media:
I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.
This was expressed by an author and videogame enthusiast by the name of Joanna Maciejewska. Sacasas's reply was that the work we so often seek liberation from is in fact the work that renders our lives meaningful and satisfying. The point is excellent and the post is well worth reading.
What I want to add to the conversation is an further elaboration supporting Ariel's frustration. The excellent examples she gives - the dishes and the laundry - are telling. Both are partially automated: there is some significant portion of the work that is done by a machine, and the human work that remains is interfacing with the machine more than the clothes or dishes. Part of the the reason we don't see the opportunity for human service and connection in dishes and laundry is because the relationality has been hidden by design in the dishwasher and washing machine.
Laundry is not a experience of cleaning clothes so that someone you can love can wear them. It's primarily an experience of moving stuff from container to container, from washer to dryer to basket to dresser. Because your encounter with the dirty shirt is en masse, anonymous, assembly line, you don’t recall the moment of life that caused the stain in the first place. Because you don’t take the time and effort working on that particular stain, you aren’t prompted to recall the effort it took to make that shirt clean when you see your loved one wear it. In total, you don't experience the relationality of your labor as clearly. The logic of the washing machine treats human work not as the material and means of virtue, but a useful resource to bridge the not-automated-yet parts of the washing process. Dishwashers work similarly. The reason it is the human’s responsibility to load the dishwaser is not because positioning bowls and plates magnifies one’s soul more than scrubbing, it’s just because we haven’t figured out how to get a cheap-enough machine to safely move ceramics around. We experience dishes and laundry as work that treats the human person as a robot, and we recoil at it—rightly so!—and wish it upon the robots.1
It is certainly not impossible to have the right orientation of soul to this work, but it is more difficult. It is telling that it takes a Mother Teresa to remind us to "Wash the plate not because it is dirty, nor because you are told to, but because you love the person who will use it next." May God grant that one day our designers and designs can preach the same to us!
Even the separation of washing dishes to its own task, separate from the people with whom you have enjoyed and will enjoy the meal, is a temptation in this same vein. Here, the design is more social than physical, but the premise is the same. It is more difficult to experience the shared use of the dishes if you wash them individually. On the converse, my wife still tells stories of the joy of washing dishes as a group of Girl Scouts after making pancakes when camping. The conviviality of the meal and its work is so tangible that even children can encounter it deeply and recall it years later.
I hope the example of individual vs. group dishwashing illustrates the "problem of technology" well. It is not as if there is some hidden line between all just and unjust technologies regardless of person or society, and handwashing is just and dishwashers (and AI) are not. The problem of technology, when there is one, is that we have crossed the line for our society, for our neighbors, for ourselves, evidenced by our difficulty in seeing the value in dishwashing. With a clearer and more saintly disposition - like ones I hear from parents all the time - we can reflect upon dishwashing as a service of others, even if we are separated by space or bad design. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.
At the same time, the long vision is not to simply live with these technologies like dishwashers and washing machines as if they are divine laws handed down from on high, but to reshape them to better reflect our mission to love God with all we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. For example, I have hope we can redesign the dishwasher and the washing machine to glorify human work rather than treat it like just another resource.
But for now, when you need to remind yourself who your work is for, consider hand-washing the dishes.
Don’t leave this post as one-way propaganda, join in the conversation here on Substack or the Discord server. Here are some questions to consider:
What are the moments you do encounter relationality in your partially-automated work?
What are some ways your process of doing the laundry or the dishes could be made more convivial, loving, relational?
What are some ways a different design or technology would better fit that conviviality, love, relationality?
I hope this goes without stating, but is obviously not care work as such that is degrading, as that would render unintelligble Jesus’s washing of the feet and His care of the sick (as well as the many people who have followed His lead). Rather, in a society that values novelty, sales, power, etc., caretaking can only be judged for the sake of efficiency by what it enables others to do, which completely misses the point.