Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • 2020
  • Book

Work, Mate, Marry, Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny

By: Debora L. Spar
  • Format:Print
ShareBar

Abstract

Covering a time frame that ranges from 8000 BC to the present, and drawing upon both Marxist and feminist theories, the book argues that nearly all the decisions we make in our most intimate lives—whom to marry, how to have children, how to have sex, how to think about love and romance and families—are driven, and always have been driven by technology. We think we’re behaving as fully autonomous individuals; we think we’re pushing or participating in social change; but we’re actually just being swept up in, and responding to, much broader shifts in technology. Or to what Marx and his kin would have termed “the means of production.”

As current technologies—particularly the technologies of assisted reproduction, robotics, and artificial intelligence—continue to evolve, they will drive fundamental changes in how we structure our families and our lives.

Keywords

Innovation; Family; Women; Reproduction; Artificial Intelligence; Robots; Gender; Demography; History; Innovation and Invention; Relationships; Society; Information Technology; AI and Machine Learning; Biotechnology Industry; Computer Industry; Health Industry; Information Technology Industry; Manufacturing Industry; Technology Industry; Africa; Asia; Europe; Latin America; North and Central America

Citation

Spar, Debora L. Work, Mate, Marry, Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
  • Purchase

About The Author

Debora L. Spar

General Management
→More Publications

More from the Author

    • February 2022
    • Faculty Research

    Linda Oubré at Whittier College

    By: Debora L. Spar and Julia Comeau
    • November 2021
    • Faculty Research

    Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place

    By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein
    • June 2021
    • Faculty Research

    Linda Oubré at Whittier College (C)

    By: Debora L. Spar and Haley P. Brown
More from the Author
  • Linda Oubré at Whittier College By: Debora L. Spar and Julia Comeau
  • Hitting Home: Amazon and Mary's Place By: Paul M. Healy, Debora L. Spar and Amy Klopfenstein
  • Linda Oubré at Whittier College (C) By: Debora L. Spar and Haley P. Brown
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College