Looking back on those 20th-century predictions of how much leisure time we would all have after the year 2000 may be a bit galling for lecturers preparing to take piles of marking and lesson-planning home for the weekend.
Such luxury must seem as far away as the futuristic hover car and the housework robot.
So City amp; Guilds, the awarding body, has stepped in with a more sobering view of the future.
It predicts we will be so busy with work that jobs will be created for people to take over stuff we would previously have done in our leisure time. These include “organising household repairs”, “taking the car to the garage” and even finding a date - presuming, of course we have time to go.
But there’s good news for lecturers. “Education tutors,” the Camp;G forecasts, “will be in stronger demand as growing numbers of parents decide to ‘top up’ their children’s education.”
And for those of you complaining that computers have not made your workload any lighter, there is some heartwarming news by way of compensation. Estate agents will apparently be driven out of business, “thanks to the Internet”.
