Antisocial Media: Anxious Labor in the Digital Economy

Greg Goldberg

Published by New York University Press 2018

Antisocial Media

Anxious Labor in the Digital Economy

Greg Goldberg

Volume 21 in the series Postmillennial Pop

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479829989.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

The debate surrounding the transformation of work at the hands of digital technology and the anxieties brought forth by automation, the sharing economy, and the exploitation of leisure

We have been told that digital technology is now threatening the workplace as we know it, that advances in computing and robotics will soon make human labor obsolete, that the sharing economy, exemplified by Uber and Airbnb, will degrade the few jobs that remain, and that the boundaries between work and play are collapsing as Facebook and Instagram infiltrate our free time.

In this timely critique, Greg Goldberg examines the fear that work is being eviscerated by digital technology. He argues that it is not actually the degradation or disappearance of work that is so troubling, but rather the underlying notion that society itself is under attack, and more specifically the bonds of responsibility on which social relations depend. Rather than rushing to the defense of the social, however, Goldberg instead imagines the appeal of refusing the hard work of being a responsible and productive member of society.

Author / Editor information

Goldberg Greg :

Greg Goldberg is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Wesleyan University, and Affiliated Fellow at Yale University’s Information Society Project. His work has appeared in New Media & Society, WSQ, ephemera, and on the Huffington Post, and in the edited collections The Affective Turn and Rethinking the Innovation Economy.

Reviews

Antisocial Media is a useful resource for those seeking a broad strokes overview of the discussions surrounding playbor, automation, and the sharing economy, and the critique can provide some interesting food for thought.

It is evident that Goldberg is a superb teacher—when ideas are posited, Goldberg concisely explains their origin and the stakes. Not only is this useful for building interdisciplinary coalitions, but it reads as a work that would be useful for students—at both the undergraduate and graduate level—who would benefit from contextualization in order to advance in the fields with which Goldberg is in conversation: media studies, affect studies, and queer theory, among others. Moreover, it is a book I would recommend to friends and acquaintances who have inquiring minds but bemoan what they consider to be impenetrable academic writing.

Antisocial Media presents a timely discussion of the relationship among work, technologies, and sociality...It also challenges the public and researchers to question power relations embedded in critiques of technologies.

Jackie Orr, author of Panic Diaries: A Geneaology of Panic Disorder:
Smart, perverse, disorientingAntisocial Media resists a desire for 'the social' in pursuit of more surprising, and radical, connections. As a serious theorist and playful sociologist, Goldberg challenges readers to question the normative demand to work, and recognize the anxious affect structuring contemporary critiques of digitally-mediated shifts in labor and leisure. Rarely has queer thought risked being so irresponsible, and so insistently pleasurable.

Lucas Hilderbrand, author of Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright:
Antisocial Media offers a bold analysis of anxieties about recent transformations in labor--facilitated by the so-called sharing or gig economyas epistemic problems. Rooted in queer theorys critiques of normativity, Goldbergs polemical book has the potential to change the conversations about work in American studies, labor studies, and digital media studies by asking us to question the value of social relations themselves.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Anxiety and the Antisocial Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
2. Playing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
3. Automating Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
4. Sharing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Epilogue Immaterial World Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: January 16, 2018
ISBN: 9781479870592