6. LABOUR IN CYBERSPACE: TELEWORK?

THEMES

We're down to ground with a bump this week, as we turn to examine the economic implications of the networks, and what business has in store for us on the so-called information highway. We'll start of by looking at the debate surrounding telework. Does on-line work, conducted out of the office, in the home, mean more autonomy and creativity for employees cosy in their electronic cottages? Or does it create digital swetshops of isolated, overworked and underpaid cyber-labour?

READINGS
Friedman, Chapter 7, "All in a Day's Work."
 
THINGS TO DO
You'll want to catch the talk this week by Susan Bryant, a researcher from the School of communication at Simon Fraser University who is completing a study of telework entitled "Electronic Cottages and On-Line Sweatshops: Home Based Work on the Information Highway." It is in on Wenesday, Oct. 21, 12 to 2, in the Social Sciences Centre, Room 2110..
 
GOING FURTHER

Telework is of course only one of the commercial applications of the network. Here are three on-line sources about the overall logic corporate interests are following on the "highway":.

  • Joshua Wolf Shenk "The Robber Barons of the Information Highway."
  • Dan Schiller, "Ambush on the I-Way: Information Commoditization on the Electronic Frontier."
  • Mitchell Kapor, "Where Is the Digital Highway Really Heading?"

    • You could also take a look at the report Under Construction: A Survey of Canada's Information Highway , by Paul Caulfield.Another useful Can-con source is David McIntosh, "Cyborgs in Denial: Technology and Identity in the Net" in Fuse Magazine 17:3, 1994.

     
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