https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Em96NVxO9Q — So This is Progress (Terry Jones, BBC, 1991)

Apparently, minute hands were added to clocks so factory owners could extract more work from their employees.

Medieval people used to own more property (though not technologically equivalent of course) and "owned" more of their time than the average person today.

----

As for the title of this post, I can testify to that: As a solo coder, AI has actually increased the amount of work I do - but in a good way!

Even on non vibe-coded stuff, AI reviews keep helping me finding bugs and inconsistencies to fix that would have taken ages to even notice on my own

but more than that, whenever I have the faintest idea about anything, I can immediately put it to practice and explore it further or move on to other ideas.

Even when I'm outdoors away from my computer doing some normal life stuff in meatspace, I often think of stuff and pull out my phone and open the ChatGPT app to remote into my computer's Codex.

This is actually fun.

> Medieval people used to own more property (though not technologically equivalent of course) and "owned" more of their time than the average person today.

That's a pretty serious misconception unless by "medieval people" you mean the nobility. Common peasants had some hereditary title to the land they worked but the land itself was owned by the lord and the king. They were more like hereditary tenants but much worse off contractually than our modern interpretation of a tenant would suggest since they (and their progeny) were often obligated to remain on their land and work it without the option to go elsewhere. They paid their rent in labor and produce or sometimes money if they had any. They had parcels of land that are large by modern standards because they were farmers and they had to sustain themselves on what they grew on their land as well as give a portion of what they produced to the lord that actually owned the land.

They may have "owned" more of their time in that they weren't employed in the modern sense but they still had to put in as much work as it would take to feed themselves and pay their rent. They absolutely had to perform the work their lord demanded of them which might include additional agricultural labor on other plots of land or threshing grain.

It really wasn't a better system. Agricultural labor is gruelling without modern equipment. It's even worse when your life depends on it. Not being allowed to choose where to live or choose your occupation and having that apply to your children and your children's children is worse.

Imagine if you were permanently contracted with your landlord. You could never move to another apartment and your children were obligated to live in the same apartment. On top of that you had to do the maintenance work for the building whenever the landlord asked you to and you still had to pay him rent on top of that. You'd still be slightly better off than a peasant because you wouldn't have to be a subsistence farmer.