Recent innovations in digital technologies are fundamentally transforming the world of work. A digital gig economy is emerging that threatens to displace traditional labour relations based on legally regulated labour contracts. Companies like Uber, Deliveroo, or Amazon Mechanical Turk rely increasingly on ‘independent contractors’ who earn piece-rate wages by completing tasks sent to them via their smartphones. This development understandably pushes workers to desire more autonomy, but what would workers’ autonomy mean in the digital age? This book argues that the digital gig economy undermines workers’ autonomy by putting digital technology in charge of workers’ surveillance, leading to exploitation, alienation, and exhaustion. To secure a more sustainable future of work, digital technologies should instead be transformed into tools that support human development instead of subordinating it to algorithmic control. The best guarantee for human autonomy is a politics that transforms digital platforms into convivial tools that obey the rhythm of human life.

This critical, international and interdisciplinary edited collection investigates the new normal of work and employment, presenting research on the experience of the workers themselves. The collection explores the formation of contemporary worker subjects, and the privilege or disadvantage in play around gender, class, age and national location within the global workforce. Organised around the three areas of: creative working, digital working lives, and transitions and transformations, its fifteen chapters examine in detail the emerging norms of work and work activities in a range of occupations and locations. It also investigates the coping strategies adopted by workers to manage novel difficulties and life circumstances, and their understandings of the possibilities, trajectories, mobilities, identities and potential rewards of their work situations. This book will appeal to a wide range of audiences, including students and academics of the sociology of work and labor history, and those interested in understanding the implications of the ‘new normal’ of work and employment.

Where do you work? We may answer this question with a physical location... but increasingly that is either only a partial truth, impossible to answer or just irrelevant. In this fascinating, highly personal investigation into work, Paul Miller challenges us rethink how and where we work today. Blending his own working career experiences, with those of organizations, Miller says it is the 'digital' in the workplace that now defines and shapes our working lives. Building on compelling stories from well-known organizations, Miller explains in a powerful narrative how every aspect of work is being transformed. This is an essential exploration of modern and future work that we can all relate to personally. Addiction, disappointment, liberation, slavery, speed - 'The Digital Workplace' is a captivating manifesto for work that lingers in the head and the heart. Paul Miller is a technology and social entrepreneur. He is CEO and Founder of the Digital Workplace Forum and the Intranet Benchmarking Forum and has been at the heart of the work and technology revolution for the last decade. He is the host of IBF Live, a monthly intranet media show, and Executive Producer and host of the annual IBF 24, which features 24 hours of the world's best intranets plus thought-provoking discussion on how work is being redesigned through technology. He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, and wrote the best-selling book Mobilising the Power of What You Know. After an early career as a business journalist and speech writer, he published the influential WAVE magazine in 1990 and established The Empowerment Group in 1992, pioneering new approaches to communication within major organizations. In 1993, he co-founded the Ideas Cafe, a regular innovation event, shaped along social software lines during the early days of the web. Paul was one of the leaders of the innovative 'Fathers and Daughters Weekends'. He lives in London and has two daughters.

Our world is about to change. In Digital Destiny: How the New Age of Data Will Change the Way We Live, Work, and Communicate, Shawn DuBravac, chief economist and senior director of research at the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), argues that the groundswell of digital ownership unfolding in our lives signals the beginning of a new era for humanity. Beyond just hardware acquisition, the next decade will be defined by an all-digital lifestyle and the “Internet of Everything”—where everything, from the dishwasher to the wristwatch, is not only online, but acquiring, analyzing, and utilizing the data that surrounds us. But what does this mean in practice? It means that some of mankind’s most pressing problems, such as hunger, disease, and security, will finally have a solution. It means that the rise of driverless cars could save thousands of American lives each year, and perhaps hundreds of thousands more around the planet. It means a departure from millennia-old practices, such as the need for urban centers. It means that massive inefficiencies, such as the supply chains in Africa allowing food to rot before it can be fed to the hungry, can be overcome. It means that individuals will have more freedom in action, work, health, and pursuits than ever before.

This innovative guide brings the benefits of life story work - traditionally undertaken with younger children - to young people and adolescents. It describes how to use computers, free software, smartphones and camcorders in a range of contemporary and exciting ways. With an intensely practical approach it outlines a series of fun and engaging projects on which the practitioner and young person can work together, including photo collages, making soundtracks, creating cartoons, and filming guided walks, all designed to help young people make sense of their history.

Contributing to recent debate on the emergence of digital and agile work, this book explores the implications for labour and employment relations within and beyond organizational boundaries. Taking a multidisciplinary approach to the key issues and challenges of digitalization, this collection covers topics such as the gig economy, crowdworking and Industry 4.0. Theory and analysis are combined as the authors examine the impact of digital and smart work on organization, HRM and labour law. With comprehensive empirical evidence for those interested in understanding the more complex trajectories of today’s transforming work relationships, this book will not only appeal to students and academics but also to policy-makers, trade unionists and employers’ organizations.