Pluralistic: Podcasting "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk" (20 Mar 2023)

Today’s links Podcasting “Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk”: Why today’s Luddites should be smashing apps. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading Podcasting “Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk” (permalink) This week on my podcast, I read my recent Medium column, “Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk,” about the worst-of-all-worlds created by bossware, where an app is your boss, and you live at work because your home and/or car is a branch office of the factory: https://doctorow.medium.com/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk-463e2730ef0d As with so much of my work these days, the column opens with a reference to the Luddites, and to Brian Merchant’s superb, forthcoming history of the Luddite uprisings, “Blood in the Machine”: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/ As Merchant explains, the Luddites were anything but technophobes: they were skilled high-tech workers whose seven-year apprenticeships were the equivalent to getting a Master’s in Engineering from MIT. Their objection to powered textile machines had nothing to do with fear of the machines: rather, it was motivated by a clear-eyed understanding of how factory owners wanted to use the machines. The point of powered textile machines wasn’t to increase the productivity of skilled textile workers – rather, it was to smash the guilds that represented these skilled workers and ensured that they shared in the profits from their labor. The factory owners wanted machines so simple a child could use them – because they were picking…Pluralistic: Podcasting "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk" (20 Mar 2023)

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