Smart Machines and Service Work: Automation in an Age of Stagnation (Field Notes)

Smith, Jason E.

ISBN 10: 1789143187 / ISBN 13: 9781789143188

Published by Reaktion Books, 2020

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 369487083

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Smart Machines and Service Work: Automation in an Age of Stagnation (Field Notes)
• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1789143187
• ISBN 13: 9781789143188
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In recent decades digital devices have reshaped daily life, while tech companies’ stock prices have thrust them to the forefront of the business world. In this rapid, global development, the promise of a new machine age has been accompanied by worries about accelerated joblessness thanks to new forms of automation. Jason E. Smith looks behind the techno-hype to lay out the realities of a period of economic slowdown and expanding debt: low growth rates and an increase of labor-intensive jobs at the bottom of the service sector. He shows how increasing inequality and poor working conditions have led to new forms of workers’ struggles. Ours is less an age of automation, Smith contends, than one in which stagnation is intertwined with class conflict.

About the Author

Jason E. Smith lives in Los Angeles. He has written extensively on contemporary politics and political economy in journals including Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, Commune, Critical Inquiry, and Radical Philosophy.