Digital Labor & Geographies of Crisis #DL14

By Audrey Watters. Marx famously remarked that “the history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles” — an irksome assertion for many reasons, so bear with me for invoking it. I do so only to suggest what seems to be the inverse maxim offered by the technology sector today: “there is no history; there is only planned obsolescence. There is only meritocracy, entrepreneurship, and the sharing economy.”
I write about education technology — a lot about the history of education technology — and so I’m always clenching my teeth when I hear someone suggest that Sebastian Thrun created the first MOOC or that MIT created online education, or that whatever app just raised a million or so dollars will “revolutionize education.” More...