Contributor(s): Professor Richard Sennett, Professor Lord Skidelsky | Basic income can provide the bare essentials of life permanently, or alternatively, could provide bursts of help at strategic moments of need. An automated world disorients these concepts of basic income, because automation is radically altering the ways people can support themselves by work; new conditions of bare life are appearing in society. Richard Sennett (@richardsennett) is a sociologist and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. His research interests include the relationship between urban design and urban society, urban family patterns, the urban welfare system, the history of cities and the changing nature of work. He has served as a consultant on urban policy to the Labour party and is a frequent commentator in the press. Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three volume biography of John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes. He was made a life peer in 1991, and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994. Robin Mansell is Professor of New Media and the Internet in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE.