Rushkoff vs the attention economy, "you don't play your smartphone, your smartphone plays you"

Playing for Team Human today, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research and Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Mary L. Gray.

Mary L. Gray joins Team Human to share her research into the invisible human workforce that powers the web. In her new co-authored book, Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass, Gray explores the assumptions made about the content moderators, proofreaders and AI-trainers that make the internet seem so smart. Despite the common idea that this low-paid workforce is exploited, this episode shows the ways in which the 'ghost economy’ might actually provide opportunity for those who choose to participate in it.

This week’s Team Human also includes a monologue recorded live from Betaworks Studio’s recent event on humane technology, “Human After All - Humanistic Technology for a New Era”.

You can find out more about Mary’s work at: https://ghostwork.info

You can find out more about Betaworks Studios: https://betaworks-studios.com

You can also find out more about all of our guests, listen to past shows, find out about upcoming live events, and become a contributing subscriber by visiting us at TeamHuman.fm

You can read written versions of Rushkoff’s show monologues at Medium.

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On this episode you heard Fugazi’s “Foreman’s Dog” in the intro thanks to the kindness of the band and Dischord Records.

Team Human is a production of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at Queens CUNY. Our new producer is Josh Chapdelaine, Luke Robert Mason edited and mixed this show, and Stephen Bartolomei is an invisible, but hard at work on very human things.