Further Details

Title: Breaking Things at Work
Condition: New
EAN: 9781786636775
ISBN: 9781786636775
Publisher: Verso Books
Format: Paperback
Release Date: 09/02/2021
Item Height: 210mm
Item Length: 140mm
Item Width: 12mm
Item Weight: 176g
Author: Gavin Mueller
Language: English
Subtitle: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job
ISBN-10: 1786636778
Description: In the Nineteenth-century, English textile workers responded to the introduction of new technologies on the factory floor by smashing them to bits. For years the Luddites roamed the English countryside, practicing drills and manoeuvres that they would later deploy on unsuspecting machines. The movement has been derided by scholars as a backwards-looking and ultimately ineffectual effort to stem the march of history; for Gavin Mueller, the movement gets at the heart of the antagonistic relationship between all workers, including us today, and the so-called progressive gains secured by new technologies. The luddites weren't primitive and they are still a force, however unconsciously, in the workplaces of the twenty-first century world.

Breaking Things at Work is an innovative rethinking of labour and machines, leaping from textile mills to algorithms, from existentially threatened knife cutters of rural Germany to surveillance-evading truckers driving across the continental United States. Mueller argues that the future stability and empowerment of working-class movements will depend on subverting these technologies and preventing their spread wherever possible. The task is intimidating, but the seeds of this resistance are already present in the neo-Luddite efforts of hackers, pirates, and dark web users who are challenging surveillance and control, often through older systems of communication technology.
Country/Region of Manufacture: GB
Genre: Society & Culture
Topic: Social Sciences, Law & Politics, Computing & Internet
Release Year: 2021

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