The Digital Factory: The Human Labor of Automation

The Digital Factory explores the hidden human labor that supports today's digital capitalism, including workers in Amazon warehouses, delivery drivers, Chinese gaming workers, Filipino content moderators, and rural American search engine optimizers. This work is often hidden behind the supposed magic of algorithms and thought to be automated, but it is highly dependent on human labor. Moritz Altenried's book shows that these digital factories take different forms, such as gig economy platforms, video games, and Amazon warehouses, and often share surprising similarities with factories from the industrial age.

Format: Hardback
Length: 216 pages
Publication date: 05 January 2022
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

The Digital Factory uncovers the unseen human labor that underpins today's digital capitalism. The workforce of the digital factory encompasses individuals engaged in various roles, such as those working in Amazon warehouses, delivery drivers, Chinese gaming industries, Filipino content moderation, and rural American search engine optimization. These jobs, characterized by repetitive and often stressful tasks, can be both boring and emotionally demanding, requiring a significant level of skills and knowledge. Despite the perception that this work is automated and driven by algorithms, it is, in reality, highly reliant on human labor.

The workers of the digital factory are not as dissimilar from those in traditional auto assembly lines as one might assume. Moritz Altenried takes us on a journey inside today's digital factories, revealing that they take diverse forms, including gig economy platforms, video games, and Amazon warehouses. Altenried's exploration reveals that these digital factories often exhibit surprising similarities with factories from the industrial era. As globalized capitalism and digital technology continue to reshape labor across the globe, Altenried provides a timely and insightful examination of how these changes are restructuring social divisions of labor, their geographies, as well as the stratifications and lines of struggle.

Weight: 408g
Dimension: 146 x 224 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226815497