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Reclaiming the Future of Work: Series Introduction

A colorful graphic with a yellow background and interconnected purple, teal, and pink bubbles and words in each of the bubbles. In the center, there is a dark purple bubble that says "Reclaiming the Future of Work at 4S 2025." One of the teal bubbles that emerges from the center says "'inevitable' tech change" and links to pink bubbles that say: • "positioning tech innovations as 'inevitable' narrows our collective imagination" • "worker-centered platforms face a hostile ecology" • "ignoring harms means workers are preordained for injury" • "sacrifices for the social good occur when tech innovation + societal challenges > personal harm" The next teal bubble that emerges from the center says "prefiguring & reimagining" with links to pink bubbles that say: • "alternative imaginaries allow workers to claim a different version of global migration" • "counternarratives prefigure the future of labor" • "data can serve as a rhetorical force" The third teal bubble says "direct action & resistance", with linked bubbles: • "cab drivers didn't necessarily succeed in rolling back GPS tech, but did get some labor protections" • "our only form of real power" • "delivery drivers are not trying to overthrow the app, but want tech driven emancipation" • "more information isn't going to make us act" The fourth bubble says "collective sensemaking" and links to: • "what does it mean to participate in what currently exists?" • "broadening the struggle of any fight" • "building a coalition across differences" • "history doesn't always repeat itself but it often rhymes" • "transnational cross-movement solidarity" • "how do you bring more people in?" • "collective/moral decision making & accountability on delivery driver WhatsApp groups" The fifth teal bubble says "care" and has links to the pink bubbles that say: • "care as the highest form of capitalism" • "private/public divides in information flow & social reproduction" • "accounting for invisible labor & pain" The final teal bubble emerging from the center says "role of researchers" and connects to: • "researchers & designers as active agents of the class struggle" • "designers may only have proximate knowledge rather than expertise" • "delivery drivers: we are here. We are the ones who see reality. We are the ones on the streets" At the bottom of the graphic, there is a note in white that says "Visual Summary created by Joy Ming"
Lucy Pei, Joy Ming, Kim Fernandes, Rosemary Steup September 7, 2026
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Debates about the future of work often center around reskilling adapting the workforce to fit capitalist proposals of what work should look like. Pre-digital examples include scientific management, just-in-time production, and de-skilling of industrial labor in favor of more mechanized and automated processes. Recently, capitalist proposals of arrangements of work have centered on digital platforms, algorithmic management, pervasive surveillance, and the deskilling of white-collar work through aggressive adoption of large language models (generative AI). In the face of these changes, workers are expected to accept their new, typically more controlled, unstable, exploitative work arrangements, re-train and re-skill to find employment in different or new types of work or face un- and under-employment with whatever safety net might be available. Underlying these changes to work arrangements is a drive for efficiency and profit. (read more...)

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A building with a large dark tiled sloped roof, strung with warm string lights, stands at dusk in a plaza flanked by tall high-rise apartment towers. The wet pavement reflects the lights, and a small group of people gather near a glowing blue circular archway at the building's entrance.

Venture Capital’s Due Diligence, or Ethnography’s Adversarial Twin?

Al Lim September 4, 2026
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On a crypto builders’ night in late September 2023, I lingered in the crowd after the event. It was hosted in a crypto company’s newly renovated office in the center of Bangkok. Skipping the cold pizza (mostly due to my lactose intolerance), I made my way towards a friend who worked in that company, one of the only people I knew in the packed room. He made a few introductions before disappearing back into the crowd, leaving me beside a local Thai founder in his early 30s, Noon (a pseudonym), building a decentralized finance (DeFi) product for futures and margin trading. (read more...)

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A women in saree standing on the shore surrounded by boats, arranged in an unaligned manner. She bends into a blue bag of fishes and her hands are in the bag.

Silt, Sea and Coastal Engineering

Sridhar Raghavan September 2, 2026
இந்த உள்ளடக்கம் தமிழிலும் கிடைக்கிறது.
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This picture from Vellapallam on the Bay of Bengal coast tells a story. While the obvious one is a story on the invisible gendered labour aspects of fishery, this essay will focus on another observation from the picture – Why does the fish end up needing so much cleaning in the first place? The fish, the net on the yellow tarpaulin, the fisherman’s shirt, all seen covered with clayey silt. What is the story of this tiny silt and its role in making the coasts? (read more...)

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Seven irregularly shaped fragments from two wisdom teeth, arranged from largest (left) to smallest (right). An intact equine incisor is positioned between the fourth and fifth fragments.

A Horse in the Archive: Notes on Incompleteness in Biometric Infrastructures

kayah August 31, 2026
Este conteúdo também está disponível em português.
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A few months ago, I underwent four surgeries to remove two wisdom teeth. Long and painful, they took from me solid parts with strange shapes — a friend, on seeing one of the pieces, said it looked like a shark’s tooth! It was a slow, drawn-out experience: after each surgery, I had to recover before starting the next stage of the same process. During each one, I heard the dentist and her assistants discussing how stubbornly that tooth was attached to my skull. (read more...)

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“Can You Hear Me Now?”: Listening in China’s Romance Simulation Games

Naijia Liu August 28, 2026
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I was clicking through a game studio’s website when an image caught my eye. In a warm, cozy office, several people sit in front of their laptops, heads slightly tilted, listening carefully through headsets and taking notes. In the background, cartoonish banners on the walls display the phrases “Leave a comment” and “After hearing the players’ voices, what are your thoughts?” in large font. People gather to stick their notes onto the wall or read the ones written by others. The accompanying text reads: “Through all the challenges, it is the support and companionship of our customers that has fueled our pursuit of dreams… Our team sat in the player experience hall, where we carefully listened to the voices of our players.” (read more...)

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A large group of people gathers on a grassy field with tents, tables, chairs, and activities for children.

The Kids Are AI-right

Manar Naser August 26, 2026
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In January of 2026, I found myself as an instructional assistant in a fifth-grade English Language Arts class, where I would work with small groups to improve students’ writing. I developed a system where I would reward my students with one piece of candy in exchange for one essay. The system worked out great, but it soon reached a point where students would ask me for candy in the halls without an essay. One day, Kay , a strong yet uninterested writer, asked me for a Jolly Rancher. I asked if she had an essay for me. Kay giggled and asked, “Can I use ChatGPT to write it?” Her tone conveyed sarcasm, implying that if she used ChatGPT to write the essay, she would not have to do the work to get the reward. By telling this joke, she already knew what my answer would be. I was taken aback. How does a fifth grader already know about ChatGPT and its social problems? It seems obvious now, but at the time, I just said “no, you are not allowed to use AI to write your essays.” Kay giggled and skipped away, confirming that she knew using ChatGPT was never an option in the first place. (read more...)

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A stream, shaded by trees, flows through an urban area. On the left, people gather on the sidewalk, while a road runs along the right.

Dispatch from Seoul: Reflections on the Science, Technology & Human Values Science and Technology Studies School, June 2026

Lachlan Hensey August 24, 2026
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It is the third of our four days at the 2026 ST&HV Science and Technology Studies (STS) School. We file past laboratories populated by white-coated researchers and take our seats in a classroom in Seoul National University’s (SNU) College of Natural Sciences. “Look – real scientists!” someone jokes as we sit down. (read more...)

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Image of the author looking at the camera, wearing a red shirt. Their hair is pulled back with a red clip.

In the Pensive Pause of Supervision: A Footnote on Citing Santos

Tanu Biswas August 20, 2026
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Author’s editorial prelude: In what follows, I open up insight into a micro-moment of everyday scholarly life which shows itself through the body; like that slightly deeper breath which follows while one is thinking through a problem that occupies the mind. Such fleeting moments pass unnoticed, yet they are part of the labour and effort of what counts as teaching and supervision ‘work’. I believe there is value in turning attention to and staying with such moments as they quietly shape how one thinks, reads, judges, writes, teaches, supervises and such. My request to the reader is to stay present with the moment, the internal self-talk, and recalls that I describe in this piece. A request that places a demand on the reader to perform the sometimes-tedious task of curbing the desire to go beyond the moment that is the subject of analytical attention. (read more...)

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