Specialization Project · SPP
Katharina Binder Hyper Island
Work · Identity · Meaning, in an AI-mediated future

A World
Without

Work
Central question
Do we need work more than work needs us?
The provocation
Work became our secular religion. What do we worship once the altar is automated?
The project
A collection built from many conversations with different experts across work, AI and meaning, all circling one question: what is left of us when labor is optional.
Research spine · live
A live map of the four themes under the project. Answer the four questions anonymously and watch your dots drop into the cloud. Each colour is one strand; hover to read the question behind it.
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Hover the dots
The lens · Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1905–1980 · Being and Nothingness, a photograph, dithered

Existence precedes essence. We aren't born with a purpose, we become someone through what we choose. Meaning is made, not found.

Hiding behind a title or an algorithm is bad faith. If worth is chosen rather than handed to us by work, a world without work isn't lost meaning, it's being condemned, again, to be free.

Being-in-itself · être-en-soi

Simply is.

The mode of objects, a rock, a tool. Fixed, complete, unfree. It is what it is.

Being-for-itself · être-pour-soi

Continuously becoming.

The mode of conscious beings, never finished, free to choose. Freedom brings responsibility and anxiety.

Three questions Sartre would ask
Question 01

An existence with substance, or one without?

Question 02

A thing that merely is, or something that is becoming?

Question 03

Being-in-itself, or being-for-itself?

Scroll sideways →
The projectTap a step
The podcast · Jasmine Angkasa
Chapter 01 · the interviewLocked
Jasmine Angkasa
Data Director · “making data accessible”LinkedIn ↗
Jasmine Angkasa

Jasmine told me about a friend. The first thing that friend did with AI was play, and she rebuilt the one thing she missed: Snake, pixel for pixel as it was on her first phone.

She shared it with her closest friends, then found she couldn't quite name the feeling it woke. What had she really done? She used AI to recreate a feeling.

“Nostalgia, strong enough that she spent her tokens building a whole game, not to use it, but to feel something.”

The point: when the intent is strong enough, the work makes itself.

So what is work? For Jasmine, the memory of a stage of life. And is work our religion? A big, bold yes.

Clear level 1 to unlock · mp3 plays behind the game

NOKIA 6110 · SNAKE

The catch: you only get to listen by playing.

Level 1/3 SCORE 000
Chapter 01 · What does work mean to you?
click, then ↑ ↓ ← →  ·  eat 5 to clear the level
Nothing unlocked yet. Press start and play.
Chapter 02 · AI & Digital LaborLocked
Do we need work more than work needs us?

From where AI is already rewriting the working day. Being cast.

Clear level 2 to unlock · coming soon
Chapter 03 · Beyond WorkLocked
What do we worship once the altar is automated?

Someone for whom work has slowed or stopped, where the question is lived. To be confirmed.

Clear level 3 to unlock · coming soon
Conclusion

Still to come.

The synthesis lands once the three episodes are recorded and read against each other. This space is held for it.

Output

A collection of conversations with different experts + reflective synthesis.

Core themes

Work & identity · AI & digital labor · post-work futures.

Autopoiesis: technology that increasingly develops itself; the lens for asking whether our future is human or AI-centric.

Methods
  • Triangulation the spine: one question, three voices.
  • Narrative inquiry lived experience as method and data.
  • The Four Fs facts, feelings, findings, future.
  • Systems mapping where the voices converge and collide.
  • Speculative design the site and the Snake as probes.
Confidential. This page and its research are confidential. Please ask Katharina Binder before sharing or reproducing any part of it.
A World Without Work
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Hi, I am Katha.
Hi, I am Katha.
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