“In most cases, people don’t measure the productivity of knowledge workers,” he explained. “And when we do, we do it in really silly ways, like how many papers do academics produce, regardless of quality. We are still in the quite early stages.”

Economic productivity—a life performed in normative, regulated time—is still the unquestioned and overwhelmingly dominant metric for human worth. This means-and-ends matter is a central question for all of us: What future goods should we hope for, for ourselves and the children in our lives, and what are the mechanisms that will foster those goods?