automation-and-labor

Chapter 3 of 'The McDonaldization of Society: Into the Digital Age' compiles extensive references illustrating the expansion and intensification of McDonaldization principles—efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control—across various sectors including digital platforms, food industry innovations, retail, education, and healthcare. It highlights the rise of platform companies, the role of prosumers in digital capitalism, automation's impact on labor, and the pervasive standardization and rationalization shaping contemporary consumer and institutional practices. The chapter also addresses the implications of big data and self-service technologies in further rationalizing and controlling consumption and production processes.

The 'Preamble' chapter of 'Fully Automated Luxury Communism' introduces a series of vignettes featuring diverse characters—Yang, Chris, Leia, Peter, and Federica—each embodying different facets of contemporary technological and economic transformations. These narratives illustrate the impacts of automation, AI, space industry expansion, renewable energy, and digital personal assistants on work, social relations, and future anxieties. The chapter sets the stage for exploring how technological progress intersects with capitalism, labor, and societal change.

Chapter 2 of 'Who Owns the Future?' explores the idea that digital information fundamentally represents human contributions, and current digital economies often exploit these contributions without compensating individuals. Lanier proposes a new economic model where individuals receive nanopayments proportional to their data's value, fostering a more equitable information economy. The chapter also contextualizes this idea historically through Aristotle's reflections on automation and human labor, highlighting enduring tensions between technology, labor, and social value.

The 'Preamble' chapter of Matteo Pasquinelli's 'The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence' primarily serves as a front matter introduction, providing publication details, bibliographic data, and the book's framing as a social history of AI. It situates the work within academic and publishing contexts, highlighting its focus on the social aspects and history of automation, machinery, and AI's impact on labor. The chapter also outlines the book's structure and thematic orientation toward AI as a division of labor.

This chapter explains the fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics within the history of computing. It describes how AI systems learn from large datasets using algorithms to create models for decision-making, and how robots perform physical tasks guided by computers or programs, highlighting their impact on labor and industry. The chapter also touches on the integration of AI in robotics and the historical milestones in both fields.

This chapter addresses the multifaceted challenges posed by the proliferation of digital technology, highlighting environmental concerns like e-waste, issues of personal data privacy, and the socio-economic impacts of automation on labor. It also discusses the importance of trustworthy information sources, the risks of a digital dark age due to data loss, the significance of net neutrality, biases inherent in AI algorithms, and the digital divide that limits equitable access to technology.

The chapter traces the decline of the Sparrows Point steel mill, highlighting the deep fulfillment workers like Bill Bodani found in their labor despite economic hardship and eventual plant closure. It then details the transformation of the site into an Amazon fulfillment center, illustrating the shift from stable, unionized industrial work to precarious, low-wage warehouse labor characterized by automation, algorithmic management, and union suppression. This transition underscores broader economic and cultural shifts marked by deindustrialization, corporate dominance, and the erosion of community and worker identity.