I think, often, of the Gilbreths. You may think you’ve never heard of Frank Butler Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth, but you probably have! They pioneered the concept of efficiency, filed a truly breathtaking number of patents, and had a dozen children, two of whom wrote the books Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes (also on Libby and Hoopla as an ebook!). Maybe you’ve seen the movies based on those books. (I have seen one of the movies, which I thought was mid despite the cast. The books, however, I adore.)

Frank was a bricklayer who became frustrated with how sloppily the other bricklayers worked and developed a system—complete with inventing a scaffold to hold the bricks at working level—to speed up his own work. His life’s work was in motion study: learning what motions a person used to complete a task and figuring out how to reduce them. He parlayed this into an efficiency business which he ran with his wife Lillian, who was absolutely brilliant. They had all those children, eleven of whom survived childhood (one died of diphtheria), before Frank dropped dead at age 55 while most of the children were still living at home (I believe Anne, the oldest, was at college).

Lillian quickly discovered that their clients didn’t want to work with a woman, even one with whom they had been working all along; even one who was a PhD while her late husband had no education worth talking about; even one who had to somehow keep paying the household and business staff, feeding the children, and keeping the lights on at their house, which she had to keep the bank from repossessing. So she pivoted and took on domestic efficiency. By the early-mid 1930s she had designed the type of efficiency kitchen most of us are used to, with essentials like the stove and sink only a few steps apart, easier for a housewife to use by herself. (There is a very funny passage in Belles on Their Toes that describes a film crew coming to record her doing just that, which of course required her palatial kitchen being rearranged, had her making the only dish she actually knew how to cook, and nearly was a disaster due to a spring-loaded cat!)

My point, and I do have one, is that once, when Frank was still alive, someone asked him what he wanted to save all that time for, and he said something to the effect that it didn’t matter—you could spend your saved time playing mumblety-peg if that’s what you loved; the point was to have more time to do what you love. I often wonder what Lillian was saving time for.

You’ll never guess what this letter is actually about. That’s right, it’s AI. Its slavering proponents love to talk about how much time it saves them: They don’t have to write that email, do that research, think of that detail. But what, precisely, are they saving time for?

I cannot fathom why anyone would write a book (or a story or an essay) if they didn’t love writing. It is hardly a money-making venture for any but the most fortunate few. I suppose for most people it’s to be able to call themselves an author, but I don’t really understand that either; I don’t feel any pride in being able to say I did something if I didn’t do it.

xxoo
annika

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