Answer to Question #211046 in English for Bunny

Question

Select a suitable children’s story to address unemployment. In no more than 300 words provide a summary of the story. (10)

Answer 1

Folkes Fremtidsrejser is a children’s book about a father losing his job. It is, at first glance, a strange juxtaposition of bright, hopeful illustrations, and a very real, and very anxiety-provoking issue. But perhaps less strange when you meet its creator, Denis Rivin, who describes himself as a critical optimist. Seemingly it’s the world’s first children’s book about technological unemployment. It’s about this boy called Folke, and his family lives in a city called Future Copenhagen. It’s set in the relatively near future and most things are quite recognizable. His dad is a cab driver, but no one wants to take his cab. People prefer to fly, so he’s slowly becoming unemployed. The whole book is an exercise in thinking about what we can do in the future where unpredictability is high, and where we’re all being told that jobs will disappear. The book also tries to argue that it’s wrong to think that only blue-collar workers are being targeted. Politicians need to take a lead on this and understand that their jobs are not at all secure either. The first thing the father does when he stops driving a cab is to take care of politicians, who, in the future, are robots. In the future, political decisions will be made through a collaboration between machines and people. And I don’t think politicians will be happy about it. They’ll be the last people to suggest and implement such an idea, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not going to come much sooner than they think and that would lead to unemployment.