Two weeks ago, I answered a CFP from the Incoming Editor of Anthropology Now, Maria Vesperi, seeking short responses to a news story about the recent lay-off of photojournalists at the Chicago Sun Times. My piece, The Dark Side of DIY in Photojournalism and Photographic Ethnography came out this week. In keeping with the CFP, I wrote the piece from the perspective of visual anthropology but the issues surrounding the Sun Times decision to eliminate their entire photojournalism staff are ones that will be familiar to CASTAC colleagues working in computing and new media. The role of computing in the changing character of work in post-industrial economies has been a focus in social research on information technology at least since Shoshana Zuboff’s classic: In the Age of the Smart Machine (1989). While deskilling, downsizing, automating, and “info-mating” were central to this earlier literature, these themes figure less prominently in more (read more...)