The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology is Reshaping Power, Politics by Steven Feldstein
Interesting piece of non-fiction I decided to read for a book club. It took me a bit to get through because I haven't read much academically inclined writing in a while. I went into the book thinking the content would be about domestic American forms of digital repression. However, the book mostly deals with the problem on an international basis. It focuses on three case studies in Thailand, the Philippines, and Ethiopia and how different forms of government tend to use different kinds of digital repression techniques such as misinformation, internet shutoffs, surveillance, etc. For example, a political actor in a semi-democracy with high facebook usage like the Philippines would be inclined to use disinformation campaigns to rally support while a more authoritarian but less technologically developed nation like Ethiopia would tend to use blunter methods like internet shutoffs. I would've liked to learn more about how corporate America is involved in this on an international basis (China is mentioned a lot) but I found it a good read nonetheless.
Wrong Way by Joanne McNeil
This is a phenomenal book and feels incredibly relevant to the direction this country is headed in how we view jobs, particularly the idea of a "gig-economy." The main character, Teresa, stumbles into a job working as an employee for a tech start-up called "AllOver." While a good job on paper, she can't shake her negative feelings about it. Over the course of the novel, the idea emerges that tech companies, like AllOver, work to create a multi-faceted environment where labor becomes more and more hidden from the consumer. We all seem to feel some unconscious guilt when we interact with a server or a taxi driver. When automating or outsourcing work, tech companies intentionally cause the consumer to lose their connection with the cost of labor. Teresa’s position in the novel serves as a metaphor to the idea that no entity can fully eliminate the human involvement of creating. Wrong Way shows us through Teresa's employment at AllOver how these factors build up against personal and societal well being.
