The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
September 18, 2024 at 06:30PMIn this thoughtful essay for The Walrus, novelist and culture writer Thea Lim reflects on the value of art, of work, and of the self in a time of constant surveillance, data collection, and digital performance.
Thirty years after Agre coined the capture model, workforce management technology can track every moment at work as a production target. Amazon’s Units Per Hour score, Uber’s and Lyft’s (constantly shrivelling) base fares, and Domino’s Pizza Tracker have made it possible to time all time, even in the break room or toilet stall. These are extreme examples, but they’re echoed across the work world, with the datafication of parts of performance that used to be too baggy or obscure to crunch and so were ours to keep. “Wellness” apps provided as health benefits by corporate management that track fob swipes for office workers; case management software that counts advice by the piece for legal workers; shares, hover rate, and time on site that measure media workers; leaderboards for tech employees, ranking who worked longest.
There must exist professions that are free from capture, but I’m hard pressed to find them. Even non-remote jobs, where work cannot pursue the worker home, are dogged by digital tracking: a farmer says Instagram Story views directly correlate to farm subscriptions, a server tells me her manager won’t give her the Saturday-night money shift until she has more followers. Even religious guidance can be quantified by view counts for online church services, Yelp for spirituality. One priest told the Guardian, “you have this thing about how many followers have you . . . it hits at your gut, at your heart.”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/09/18/the-collapse-of-self-worth-in-the-digital-age/
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