I noticed almost everybody here agrees that all AI is bad, and anything produced by AI is slop. and refuse to use any software made in part or in whole with AI or help of AI? Please mention your background and usage of AI with your answer.
I also posted it here.
It was a time consuming task but it was one done as a job. Cleaning clothes was a whole industry, and getting your clothes laundered was generally affordable and something you could pay others to do for you. The washing machine allows people to do it themselves easier, but with needing to buy the machine, paying for detergent and additives, water use, keeping up with maintenance, it’s not for free. What the washing machine did was take away an industry where people had paying jobs to do the task, and turn the task into a self-care obligation that locks you into consumership. Can you make your own washing machine? Your own detergent? You have to buy those things and then do the labor yourself, unpaid. Who really benefited? The laundry industry was a tough one to work in but it was a paid job for the working class. It’s now a way for corporations to make money off of unpaid labor.
Paying for someone else to wash your clothes was a luxury for the rich and upper middle class back then just like it is today. This was not an option for the large majority of households.
Laundry was overwhelmingly unpaid household labor, done mainly by women, and it was one of the most time-consuming and physically demanding domestic tasks. Doing a single load by hand could take the better part of a day of heating water, scrubbing, rinsing, wringing, and ironing. Once electric machines became common, that work collapsed to a small fraction of the previous hours and physical effort
Like a lot of things that’s very location dependent. Geographical region, level of development, point in history etc. You and I are both correct, for example my scenario is accurate to ancient Rome or a pre-industrial European village, your scenario is true in 19th century Western American homesteaders or deeply rural communities. A similar thing happened with sewing machines where the invention of a modern tool outsourced a skilled, paid job (making clothes) to unpaid domestic labor. Did some individuals without prior access to those professional services benefit? Of course, but it meant that the bespoke clothing industry and the clothes laundering industries both deflated to the point of not being widely or cheaply available anymore, and the labor that once was a paid job was expected to be done for free.
My point was that it is not such an easy thing to point to that instantly made everyone’s lives better.