The Internet and Global Labor

Summary

On 20–21 October 2016 The New York Review of Books Foundation and Fritt Ord hosted the conference ‘Technology and the Human Future.’ Full programme and list of panelists here: http://www.frittord.no/arrangementer/…

Panel 4 The Internet and Global Labor Chair: Katherine Cecil, Documentary filmmaker and producer Kristin Braa, Professor, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo Mark Graham, Professor, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford Neha Gupta, PhD Candidate, University of Nottingham

KRISTIN BRAA is Professor at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo. She is the author, with Petter Nielsen and Ola Hodne Titlestad, of Innovation for Health in Developing Countries’ in ‘Medical Technology – Meeting Tomorrow’s Health Care Challenges (2014).

KATHERINE CECIL is a filmmaker developing a transmedia documentary The Claiborne Avenue History Project (2016). Her film Race won the HBO Best Documentary Award at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival (2010). She coordinates publicity for the New York Review of Books Foundation conferences.

MARK GRAHAM is Professor of Internet Geography at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, and a Faculty Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute at the British Library, London. He is the author, with William H Dutton of Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication Are Changing Our Lives (2014).

NEHA GUPTA is a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham. She is the author, with David Martin, Jacki O’Neill and Benjamin V Hanrahan of ‘Turking In a Global Labor Market’, in The Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (2016).

About the Conference: With the coming of what we’re calling ‘pervasive internet access’ is there evidence that the quality of our life experiences are becoming attenuated and fragmented, undergoing mutations which point to changes in what it means to be human? Does the capture, classification and use by businesses of Big Data yielded by our Internet lives have a legitimate role in adding to consumer convenience and choice; and at what point does this ‘reality mining’ bring unacceptable violations of privacy? Does the combined use of these technologies in the workplace risk overwhelming employees with panoptic regimes of surveillance which may not only be an affront to their human dignity, but also obstacles to human creativity and so, ironically, enemies of the very employee productivity which between them the systems are meant to enhance?