Published in Stanford Social Innovation Review

Nowhere is this more true than in the world of work, where technology, with its promises of flexibility, access, and democratization, has instead become both boss and big brother, supercharging precarity, surveillance, and disenfranchisement. We know the inequities that play out in the analog world, along lines of geography, gender, ethnicity, race, class, and ability, are replicated and accelerated in the digital world. And across the globe, technologies from scheduling software to keystroke monitoring applications and platform-mediated work have reduced job stability, security, and sustainability, while weakening privacy and rights to free association. Indeed, tech companies that facilitate our ability to socialize, share information, and purchase goods and services are powered by digital supply chains and shadow workforces of largely Global Majority/South subcontractors, including gig workers, content moderators, and data labelers, who face inhumane working conditions without fair compensation or protections. 

And yet, the tragic logic of digital solutionism remains the default narrative, presuming the benefits of tech far outweigh the harms, and insisting that working people adapt to new technological futures without question, much less a meaningful say in their design, deployment, and governance.

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