Book Launch: Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry

Book Launch: Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry (Capacitor Collective)

Published by Common Notions (find the book at this link)

Thursday, April 30 6–8pm

SFU Vancouver HC 7000

Dawn Walker (Tech Workers Coalition Canada)//Alicia Massie (BC Federation of Labour)//Véronique Sioufi (BC Policy Solutions)//Brian Dolber (California State University San Marcos)//Julie Chen (University of Toronto)//Lilly Irani (UC San Diego)//Enda Brophy (SFU)

As tech billionaires fall in line with fascism, artificial intelligence is being deployed in a renewed assault on workforces across the economy. But (at least for now) it still takes labour to make profits for the oligarchs, and the tech sector has faced an unprecedented cycle of worker organizing in recent years: from software engineers to social media content moderators, from online gig workers to outsourced temps, vendors and contractors, from food delivery and rideshare platform workers to e-commerce warehouse and data centre workers, workers have mobilized all along the digital value chain. Drawing on discussion and research with workers, unions, and other worker-led organizations, Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry describes, theorizes, and circulates experiences of digital workers’ inquiry, or collaborative research that feeds into labour organizing within and against digital capitalism. This book gathers stories, struggles, and strategies from the tech sector’s labour movement, featuring interviews with organizers and drawing on collaborations with the Alphabet Workers’ Union, Tech Workers Coalition, Rideshare Drivers United, Turkopticon, Amazon Workers Solidarity, and other organizations.

Please join the authors and local labour advocates for a conversation on how to bring research and organizing together in the age of artificial intelligence.

Copies of the book will be for sale at the event, with all proceeds going to SFU Contract Worker Justice, a coalition of SFU workers, faculty, students and community members fighting to end the outsourcing of food and cleaning services at Simon Fraser University.

The Capacitor Collective includes: Enda Brophy, Julie Chen, Alessandro Delfanti, Brian Dolber, Lilly Irani, and Tamara Kneese.

The organizers would like to thank the Institute for the Humanities and the Faculty of Communication, Culture and Technology at SFU for their support of this event.

Simon Fraser University lies on the unceded territories of the Musqueum, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, Kwikwetlem, Katzie, Kwantlen, Qayqayt, and Stó:lo Nations.

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Host or Publisher Enda Brophy