If Plato were alive today, he might well regard much of the work we do as leisure, and much of the leisure we enjoy as work. Those extravagantly paid Davosian chief executives who jet around the world discussing the great issues of the day are in fact indulging in an endless swirl of symposia. But Plato would probably look askance at others who enjoy fishing, gardening and cooking, and view those activities as laborious occupations.

So argued the Czech philosopher Tomas Sedlacek at a recent Financial Times conference, where he claimed to be working. His argument was intended (I think) mostly as an intellectual provocation to highlight how our definitions of work and leisure depend on cultural context rather than immutable social laws.

But it would certainly help us unravel some of the puzzles of our digital economy if we were to flip some of our conceptual classifications on their head.