Uberland
How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Silicon Valley technology is transforming the way we work, and Uber is leading the charge. An American startup that promised to deliver entrepreneurship for the masses through its technology, Uber instead built a new template for employment using algorithms and Internet platforms. Upending our understanding of work in the digital age, Uberland paints a future where any of us might be managed by a faceless boss.
The neutral language of technology masks the powerful influence algorithms have across the New Economy. Uberland chronicles the stories of drivers in more than twenty-five cities in the United States and Canada over four years, shedding light on their working conditions and providing a window into how they feel behind the wheel. The book also explores Uber’s outsized influence around the world: the billion-dollar company is now influencing everything from debates about sexual harassment and transportation regulations to racial equality campaigns and labor rights initiatives.
Based on award-winning technology ethnographer Alex Rosenblat’s firsthand experience of riding over 5,000 miles with Uber drivers, daily visits to online forums, and face-to-face discussions with senior Uber employees, Uberland goes beyond the headlines to reveal the complicated politics of popular technologies that are manipulating both workers and consumers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This revelatory study by technology ethnographer Rosenblat, of New York City's Data and Society Research Institute, explores "how Uber and other corporate giants in Silicon Valley are redefining everything we know about work in the 21st century through subtle changes ushered in by technology." Rosenblat, who spent almost four years using Uber and interviewing its drivers and staff, makes clear that, contrary to the ads promoting Uber as a "pathway to the middle class for anyone who wanted to drive," ride-sharing service drivers must struggle to make such work profitable. Uber, she posits, has treated those drivers as "end users of its software, rather than as workers," a posture that has exempted the company from some regulations governing employee rights and cheated workers out of money they're owed, including by not crediting tips to them. More broadly, Rosenblat argues that the "sharing economy popularized wider changes to work culture by conflating work with altruistic contributions... devaluing work itself" and that "we are all being played by the technologies that have become commonplace, because, simply put, we want to use them." This jargon-free and intriguing expos offers food for thought for anyone interested in worker protections or societal changes driven by technology.
