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.

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.

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.