April 19, 2026
White-Collar Work Is Becoming Redundant. “Black-Collar” Work Is Just Beginning.
Over the past few years, AI has become impossible to ignore. But most of the discussion still happens at a fairly shallow level: which jobs will be replaced, which industries will be disrupted, and who needs to learn the latest tools before they fall behind. Those questions matter, obviously. Humans do enjoy staring at the smoke while ignoring the building’s structural damage.What they often miss is the deeper point: AI is not just changing the division of labor. It is changing the institutional architecture that underpins modern society. That is why I increasingly find it useful to think about this moment through the lens of technological anthropology.By technological anthropology, I do not mean a simple history of inventions, nor a neutral analysis of technology as a tool. I mean putting technology back into the broader question of how human beings, as a species, organize civilization. From that perspective, the central question is no longer merely whether this or that job will disappear. It becomes something larger: why did a certain civilizational structure emerge in the first place, and is it still necessary now?That is the question I keep coming back to: in the post-AI era, why might the white-collar class itself begin to lose its necessity?
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