I don’t think it’s really about automation, though. It’s about people! To me it’s at least partly about people’s misconceptions and cluelessness today about what the future really will hold. And how most of us can only think of the future in terms of what we know now.
And I think that a good part of the humor there is in a shared acknowledgement of the daily frustrations we have now—smashed packages, poor customer service, raising kids, stupid entertainment, employment concerns, worry about what kind of people are on the Supreme Court…I see a “the more things change, the more things stay the same” vibe to it. And more specifically, “S.N.A.F.U.” will likely always be with us.
Also, to me it brings out the fact that the future doesn’t suddenly happen overnight, and then everything’s completely different…rather, we live, and have always lived, with the New overlapped onto and bumping up with the Old. It’s rarely a seamless replacement.
So again, I think it’s not so much about automation, it’s about us. I’ll even go out on a limb to say—as is all art, in one way or another.
