The digital factory : the human labor of automation
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The digital factory : the human labor of automation
University of Chicago Press, 2022
- : cloth
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [193]-203) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The Digital Factory reveals the hidden human labor that supports today's digital capitalism.
The workers of today's digital factory include those in Amazon warehouses, delivery drivers, Chinese gaming workers, Filipino content moderators, and rural American search engine optimizers. Repetitive yet stressful, boring yet often emotionally demanding, these jobs require little formal qualification, but can demand a large degree of skills and knowledge. This work is often hidden behind the supposed magic of algorithms and thought to be automated, but it is in fact highly dependent on human labor.
The workers of today's digital factory are not as far removed from a typical auto assembly line as we might think. Moritz Altenried takes us inside today's digital factories, showing that they take very different forms, including gig economy platforms, video games, and Amazon warehouses. As Altenried shows, these digital factories often share surprising similarities with factories from the industrial age. As globalized capitalism and digital technology continue to transform labor around the world, Altenried offers a timely and poignant exploration of how these changes are restructuring the social division of labor and its geographies as well as the stratifications and lines of struggle.
Table of Contents
One
Workers Leaving the Factory: Introduction
Two
The Global Factory: Logistics
Three
The Factory of Play: Gaming
Four
The Distributed Factory: Crowdwork
Five
The Hidden Factory: Social Media
Six
The Platform as Factory: Conclusion
Seven
The Contagious Factory: Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"