Ekbia Hamid R. - Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism

Acting with Technology

Bonnie Nardi, Victor Kaptelinin, and Kirsten Foot, editors

Tracing Genres through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design, Clay Spinuzzi, 2003

Activity-Centered Design: An Ecological Approach to Designing Smart Tools and Usable Systems, Geri Gay and Helene Hembrooke, 2004

The Semiotic Engineering of Human Computer Interaction, Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, 2005

Group Cognition: Computer Support for Building Collaborative Knowledge, Gerry Stahl, 2006

Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie A. Nardi, 2006

Web Campaigning, Kirsten A. Foot and Steven M. Schneider, 2006

Scientific Collaboration on the Internet, Gary M. Olson, Ann Zimmerman, and Nathan Bos, editors, 2008

Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie A. Nardi, 2009

Digitally-Enabled Social Change: Online and Offline Activism in the Age of the Internet, Jennifer Earl and Katrina Kimport, 2011

Invisible Users: Youth in the Internet Cafs of Urban Ghana, Jenna Burrell, 2012

Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries, Gina Neff, 2012

Car Crashes without Cars: Lessons about Simulation Technology and Organizational Change from Automotive Design, Paul M. Leonardi, 2012

Coding Places: Software Practice in a South American City, Yuri Takhteyev, 2012

Technology Choices: Why Occupations Differ in Their Embrace of New Technology, Diane E. Bailey and Paul M. Leonardi, 2015

Shifting Practices: A Reflective Inquiry into Technology, Practice, and Innovation, Giovan Francesco Lanzara, 2016

Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism, Hamid R. Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi, 2017

Hamid R. Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book was set in Sabon LT Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ekbia, H. R. (Hamid Reza), 1955- author. | Nardi, Bonnie A., author.

Title: Heteromation, and other stories of computing and capitalism / Hamid R. Ekbia and Bonnie A. Nardi.

Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, [2017] | Series: Acting with technology | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016043785 | ISBN 9780262036252 (hardcover : alk. paper)

eISBN 9780262340304

Subjects: LCSH: Labor theory of value. | Technological innovation--Economic aspects. | Capitalism.

Classification: LCC HB206 .E 2017 | DDC 331.2/5--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016043785

ePub Version 1.0

To our children:

Kaveh, Kia, and Taraneh

Anthony, Christopher, and Jeanette

for the challenges and excitements they face.

Academic writing is a delicate and tricky undertaking. The standards that govern this form of writing are suboptimal at best, self-defeating otherwise. The reason is that the standards tend to tie analysis to very specific methodologies applied at a particular level. This level-specific approach is at the foundation of how academic disciplines are traditionally organized, and while it might work for some topics some of the time, it does not for others most of the time. A case in point is the topic of the present book, which seeks to explore the relationship between computing and capitalism, with a focus on the division of labor between humans and machines. This relationship can be traced on many different levels, layers, and rhythms, from individual psychology and subjectivity all the way to the economic, political, and epochal changes of the embedding social system. As such, the topic can be meaningfully studied only through a conceptual lens that can smoothly shift back and forth between different levels of analysis. This is the tack that we have followed in this writing.

Fortunately for us, there are outstanding examples of such writing, most prominently by thinkers and writers whose ideas have deeply influenced us in other ways: Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Max Weber, to name a few. To apply the method of these thinkers to the circumstances that we seek to understand, however, we found ourselves in need of conceptual innovations, of which the term heteromation is a key example. We coined and introduced the term, knowing full well the conceptual risks and intellectual pitfalls of such innovation. In particular, we were concerned about two things: (1) the risk of conceptual vacuitythat is, of a concept with little empirical support and grounding; and (2) the pitfall of redundancy, reinventing the wheel, or what one astute reviewer of our manuscript described as the common phenomenon of term entrepreneurship.

To deal with the first concern, we have tried to ground our concepts in a wide range of empirical facts and observations, which are mainly provided in part II of the book. In regard to the second pitfall, we are quite sympathetic to the reviewers self-reflexive observation that finds in much of academic writing an extension of a capitalist logic not unlike that seen in commodity fetish and trademark. We all are, after all, the hapless, if not helpless, subjects of the current moment in human history, which is largely defined by the logic of late capitalism. We, the authors, are no exception. At the same time, our personal experiences and empirical observations have shown us that there seems to be enough novelty in the recurring and expanding phenomenon that we study for it to deserve a neologism. We were ultimately relieved to see that our critical reviewer concurred with others that our concept does indeed have theoretical legs. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all anonymous reviewers who took the time to read and comment on the manuscript, giving us very useful suggestions.

Other than empirical evidence and reviewers assessment, we have had good fortune as participants of professional communities richly furnished with colleagues and venues that enable and reward our intellectual pursuits. We direct our acknowledgments toward recognizing, in the spirit of heteromation itself, the small, distributed, unsung, but crucial moments of invisible academic and non-academic interaction and activity that have woven themselves into this work. We also want to recognize the less proximate influences of the wider institutions that support research, whose nurturing and protection we often overlook. First and foremost, we express our gratitude to those who labor invisibly in the endless tasks of heteromation, for it was they who alerted us to the conundrum of heteromation before we had a word for it, and primed the long conversation that culminated in this book. We applaud the good cheer of these invisible workers, and their humility, humor, and eagerness to learn and share.

Much like all the little (virtual) rectangles under a curve that resolve into a particular shape, a life in the academy is composed of a stream of tasks that sometimes feel trivial and disconnected, but that do, in the end, take on a distinctive collective shape. In tribute to these tasks and the doers of the tasks, we thank all of the colleagues with whom we have published papers and books in the last several years, those with whom we have co-edited special issues of journals, those for whom we have written book chapters and who have written book chapters for us, those who write reviews for us or ask us to write reviews, those whose workshops we have attended, and those with whom we have organized workshops. You all know who you are. Your actions continually produce the vibrant community in which a book such as this can be written. The distinctive insights and knowledge of your research have found their way into the pages here.