IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
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Gaming the Algorithm
RUTH AYLETT applauds a new study of how workers are responding to the exploitation of labour by IT systems
algorithm
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DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
New releases from The Tenementals, Nik Bartsch’s Ronin, and Kuunatic
SCOTT ALSWORTH hears the call to burn down and rebuild the video game industry from the bottom up
The Chinese language only introduced a feminine pronoun in the 1920s. Now, it might adopt a gender-inclusive one, suggests JANET DAVEY
ALEX HALL is intrigued by a detailed history of Gaza that demonstrates its historic resilience and changing economy
Algorithms of Resistance
Tizanio Bonini and Emilaiano Trere
MIT Press, £29
LET’s start by saying that this book was written by two academics and published by an academic publisher. So it is keen on its theory, and although it is dedicated to workers and activists, it can at times seem a little dry and abstract.
But – and a big but – it is still a work that everyone interested in the fight against oppressive IT systems should read. The authors rightly explain that algorithmic management, in which human managers are replaced by IT systems, often via the internet, are as much an attack on worker freedoms as the factory system and its dominating machines.
These may or may not be AI systems: the AI hype is in some ways a noisy concealment of this bigger picture. In our age of information automation, whole groups of existing workers have become dominated by IT systems. We also see the creation of completely new kinds of casualised labour in the form of zero-hour platform or gig workers, for example those exploited by Uber, Just Eat and other delivery companies.
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