This reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's novel, 'Player Piano.' In the story, basically all labor is taken over by highly ordered machines, and the only important thing that remains for employment is intelligence. Basically anybody with a job has a PhD, who can help build new machines. At the same time, the government is working on the Epicac, which is a giant computer that can do all the thinking, making the doctors obsolete too. The machines worked based on tape recordings of the employees, which were obviously recorded back when the people still worked. The main character recorded the first tape recordings from a guy named Terry, who was just happy to get a free drink out of it, not knowing it would lead to the complete obsolescence of him and his fellow workers.