Will Core Post 4

 

 

This weeks readings expand upon a theme throughout the semester to consider the human and material costs and requirements of making technology 'work'. Indeed, the construction and maintenance of technological infrastructure are inseparable from the capitalist structures within which they operate. As Beller highlights, "The structural inequalities endemic to capitalist production "The structural inequalities endemic to capitalist production... are also deposited and thus operationally disappeared into our machines." I found Nakamura's piece on Chinese gold farmers in World of Warcraft particularly compelling here as it not only highlighted the emergent underclass of racialised labourer, but also how racism dominated the WoW zeitgeist to maintain this socially subordinated workforce that ultimately served wealthy western interests.

As D'Ignacio and Klein highlight, visibility and value are two interlocking vectors that are central to the social construction of technological labor. Visibility in the sense of which jobs are rendered seen and observable. And, valued in the sense of the work that is socially appreciated and remunerated accordingly. While commercial content moderation an data preparation are essential for the production and maintenance of platforms and machine learning systems, the labor of 'cleaning' content is hidden from the consumer. This not only perpetuates the mythical frame of technology working on its own (as well as narratives of fauxtomation - https://logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade/). But it also, necessarily devalues this form of labor. As D'Ignacio and Klein argue, "In our capitalist society, we tend to value work that we can see." Rendering essential maintenance and care work invisible thus entrenches the social subordination of these workers and enables poor wages and working conditions.

I was recently at MoMA and saw Andrew Norman Wilson's video essay, Workers Leaving the Googleplex (above) which uncovers the enormous underclass of workers that were employed in digitising content for Google Books. Mirroring contemporary calibrations in the gig economy, these workers are 'contractors' and are not afforded the same privileges as Google employees (free lunches, health benefits, silicon valley wages). These workers were most often people of colour, reinforcing the hegemonic matrix of domination. And yet, these configurations of invisibility and devaluation are not unique in the digital age. Rather, invoking Lumiere's Workers Leaving the Factory, Wilson highlights how these dynamics of domination are endemic to capitalism. Under capitalism, laborers are reduced to their functions and only becomes visible through abstraction, error and investigation (such as disembodied fingers caught in scans).