Uncovering Labour in Information Revolutions, 1750–2000

Discussion of the current Information Revolution tends to focus on technological developments in information and communication and overlooks both the human labour involved in the development, maintenance and daily use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the consequences of the implementation of these ICTs for the position and divisions of labour. This volume aims to redress this imbalance by exploring the role, position and divisions of information and communication labour in the broadest sense through periods of revolutionary technological change. The contributions range from eighteenth-century German clerical work, through Indian telegraph workers' actions in 1908, computing labour in early twentieth-century US electrical engineering, the impact of containerization and ICT on South-African stevedores and international seafarers, to the development of the computer programmer, labour organization in Silicon Valley, and the role of volunteer work in the early development of the World Wide Web.

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'What is fascinating in these accounts is the light they shed on how the identities which result are shaped by the interplay between coercion and resistance, initiative and inertia; how the employers' ad hoc demands for particular discrete skills and competencies are countered by workers' aspirations for coherently demarcated occupations which provide personal identity, development, and status; and how these in turn are shaped by specific histories and geographies … such discussions could not be more timely.' International Review of Social History

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Product details

• Date Published: January 2004
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521543538
• length: 268 pages

• dimensions: 229 x 153 x 17 mm
• weight: 0.463kg
• contains: 10 b/w illus.
• availability: Available