Matthew ColeOriginally published at Tribune As tech companies accelerate their relentless drive to capture and control the flow of information across the globe, capitalism is entering a new phase. AI platforms like Palantir, Open AI and Anthropic are buying up swathes of land for data storage, deepening the automation of everyday life and the destruction of […]
When fast-fashionistas scrolling through Shein’s website came across a shirt seemingly modeled by Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, confusion, outrage, and maybe a little bit of swooning ensued. Mangione’s low-resolution doppelgänger had all the hallmarks of generative artificial intelligence—odd textures, strange lighting, and unnatural fingers. Researchers at BBC Verify found […]
There is a saying that when something is punishable by a fine, it really means “legal, for a price”. Rogue UK employers seem to take this to heart. A shocking investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published this month shows the penalty system has barely been enforced: out of more than 4,800 firms fined since […]
I joined IIPP Prof Dr. Cecilia Rikap to to discuss Dr. Plixavra Vogiatzoglou‘s book on Mass Data Surveillance & Predictive Policing. 📺 Watch the event recording here: https://lnkd.in/epx_DUa8
Cloudwork is absorbing an increasing proportion of the world’s labour and has been significantly boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic (ILO, 2021). We use cloudwork to refer to remotely performed labour mediated by digital labour platforms – companies that connect workers with clients through a digital interface, exert control over and extract value through the labour process […]
Originally published for Tribune. Every society with a concept of property also has a concept of theft. They are mutually constitutive, as Proudhon argued in 1840. To privatise public land is a form of theft; to alienate an object from its rightful owner is a form of theft; to plagiarise another person’s idea is a […]
See original here. For some time now, a façade of techno-optimism has obscured the political reality that technology is not neutral. While Marx saw both oppressive and liberatory potential in technological systems, recent narratives have tended to neglect how technology has historically been used to deepen exploitation, rather than to overcome it. In his new book, Breaking […]
The coronavirus is an exogenous shock to the global economy, causing panic in the financial markets, a jobs apocalypse and an unprecedented crisis in health services. At the same time, the necessary safety measures are challenging the very nature of work and human sociality. Social distancing and lockdowns have been implemented around the world and in many […]
Below is a series of three blogs (part 1, part 2, part 3) I wrote for Autonomy last year on the history of intelligent machines. This serves as an introduction to anyone curious about artificial intelligence and how it might shape the future of digital automation in work and society more generally. Introduction The notion […]
IIPPE 9th Annual Conference in Political Economy Pula, Croatia Joint Call for Papers from the Political Economy of Work and Social Reproduction Working Groups The Political Economy of Work and Social Reproduction Working Groups invite you to submit proposals for individual papers, themed panels or streams of panels related to our lines of inquiry. These […]
