Insecure Work in a Digital Age with Julia Ticona

The Buzz with ACT-IAC

While "the Future of Work" has become a popular topic in the post-pandemic era, the conversation has largely focused on how white-collar workers are adapting and reacting to a workplace and labor market governed and facilitated by digital technologies. The expansion of remote work has sparked plenty of discussion about our relationship to technology, both economic and philosophical.
Missing from this discourse, however, are the voices of low-wage workers. According to a 2022 Oxfam report, nearly a third of the American workforce earns less than $15 an hour. These workers, too, rely on the internet and smartphones to locate shifting and inconsistent job opportunities, yet they are not often considered in conversations about technology in the workplace, despite many earning the designation of "essential" in the darkest throes of the Coronavirus pandemic.
This week's guest set out to change that. In Left to Our Own Devices, Julia Ticona, Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, studies how low-wage workers must navigate an increasingly precarious economy using their smartphones and wits. In doing so, she reveals the ways in which these technologies can reproduce and magnify the economic, racial and gender inequalities that our society already grapples with.

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Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound
(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)