The original work sparked wide‑ranging political and economic debate and has been cited more than 2,000 times.
Going to work may, in fact, be the source of all our problems and anxieties!
Social movements have taken turns to rise and fall, ending in defeat, while reform and meaningful change have come to seem like distant fantasies. As AI and full automation accelerate, unemployment has shifted from a “transitional” problem to a “permanent” condition, and work can no longer serve as the defining framework for human life. Faced with this reality, rather than responding with fear or retreat, we should seize the helm and shape the future.
Inventing the Future refuses pessimism and boldly declares: if technology can increase productivity and reduce the need for human labour, why should it not also become a powerful means of liberating human time and rebuilding the meaning of life? Full automation, shorter working hours, and a universal basic income are not idle fantasies, but emerging historical trends.
This book offers both a utopian vision of the future and a grounded combination of historical reflection and practical guidance for action. ‘Failure’ and ‘unemployment’ need not mark the endpoint of human development; a new political and economic settlement is waiting to be invented.
Author: Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams
Translator: Black Hume
Editor: Lina Xie
Art & Design︰So Lai Ping and Hsu Wai Lun@mmmmor studio
Edition: First edition, February 2026
ISBN: 978-988-70723-5-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70783/inventingthefuture
Page: 344
Price: HK$148
Language: Complex Chinese
Content
Acknoledgement
Introduction
1. Our Political Common Sense: Introducing Folk Politics
2. Why Aren’t We Winning? A Critique of Today’s Left
3. Why Are They Winning? The Making of Neoliberal Hegemony
4. Left Modernity
5. The Futue Isn’t Working
6. Post-Work Imaginaries
7. A New Common Sense
8. Building Power
Conclusion
Afterword: Reinventing the Future
About the author
Nick Srnicek
Senior Lecturer in Digital Economics in the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. Author of Platform Capitalism (Traditional Chinese edition published by Typesetter), and co‑author of After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time and the “Accelerate Manifesto,” among other works. His most recent book, Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI, has sold over 10,000 copies.
Alex Williams
Lecturer in the School of Politics, Philosophy and Area Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. Author of Political Hegemony and Social Complexity: Mechanisms of Power After Gramsci, and co‑author of Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win It Back). His research focuses on the relationship between power, technology, and politics.
About the translator
Black Hume
MA in Philosophy from National Chengchi University, Taiwan; MA in Philosophy from The Chinese University of Hong Kong; and BA (Hons) in Design from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Research interests include Žižekian and Deleuzian philosophy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and game studies.
Inventing the Future’s Notebook
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Conditions Given Rise to the Collapse of Neoliberalism Have Not Changed—An Interview with Alex William
Editor’s Note: In 2015, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work sparked wide-ranging debate within left-wing intellectual circles in Europe and North America. The book proposed automation, reduced working hours, and universal basic income as pathways for breaking out of the neoliberal framework and reopening the horizon of the future. A decade on, artificial intelligence has advanced rapidly, global political and economic orders remain in flux, and the relationships between labour, technology, and the state have grown ever…