Is Google making us stupid? Is Facebook making us lonely? Are robots going to steal our jobs? These, it seems, are the anxieties that afflict many today.

Capitalism is defined by the drive to maximize profits, and one of the surest paths to that goal has always been reducing the cost of wage labor. Hence, the constant push to increase productivity through new production techniques, automation, and now computerization and robotization.

Anxiety about the effects of capitalist technology on labor is as old as industrial capitalism itself. In folklore, one of the most famous representations of this unease is the legend of John Henry, a railroad worker who died trying to keep up with the prowess of the steam-powered hammer.