New book by Nick Dyer-Witheford:
The utopian promise of the internet, much talked about even a few years ago, has given way to the information highway’s brutal realities: coltan mines in the Congo, electronics factories in China, devastated neighborhoods in Detroit. In Cyber-Proletariat, Nick Dyer-Witheford shows the dark side of the information revolution through an unsparing analysis of class power and computerization. He reveals how technology facilitates growing polarization between wealthy elites and precarious workers and how class dominates everything from expanding online surveillance to intensifying robotization. At the same time he looks at possibilities for information technology within radical movements, casting contemporary economic and social struggles in the blue glow of the computer screen.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo20704212.ht...
Anyone read this yet? It looks very good.
It's technically not out yet, though you can read the introduction at the publisher's website. I read an early version of that introduction (he's my supervisor) and I'm excited to read the rest.