What does the future hold for work in our new technological age? How do we make sure that the uncertain future into which we are heading is heavenly and not hellish? How can we take the pleasures of work with us and eliminate the pains?

The answer: we need a post-work vision.

Questioning the received wisdom that work is good for you, that you are what you do and that ‘any job is a good job’, post-work offers a new challenge to the work-centred society.  This timely book provides a vital introduction to the post-work debate – one of the most exciting political currents of recent years. It explores not only what the future of work will be like, but more importantly what the future of work should be like.

“I have waited a decade for a book like this to come along. With wide-eyed clarity, Hester and Stronge give the field of ‘post-work’ the extended treatment and advancement it deserves. Bridging philosophy, labour history and policy debates, the book becomes more than a resource: it is a call for fresh forms of political intervention in a world where work is not working.”
– David Frayne, Author of The Refusal of Work (2015)

“Post-work is the movement of our time. This is a super smart, accessible and comprehensive account of how to think about, implement and thrive in a society that is moving away from an outmoded work ethic to a new, more humane way of being. If you don’t have time to read the many books being produced on this subject, just read this one. Essential reading for anyone worried about where we are going. Ideal for classes at all levels. And a must-have on the bookshelf. It’s going straight onto my class reading list.”
– Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College, USA, and Author of The Overworked American (1992)

Big Tech has sold us the illusion that artificial intelligence is a frictionless technology that will bring wealth and prosperity to humanity. But hidden beneath this smooth surface lies the grim reality of a precarious global workforce of millions that labour under often appalling conditions to make AI possible. Feeding the Machine presents an urgent, riveting investigation of the intricate network of organisations that maintain this exploitative system, revealing the untold truth of AI.

Based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of fieldwork over more than a decade, this book shows us the lives of the workers often deliberately concealed from view and the systems of power that determine their future. It shows how AI is an extraction machine that churns through ever-larger datasets and feeds off humanity’s labour and collective intelligence to power its algorithms. Feeding the Machine is a call to arms against this exploitative system and details what we need to do, individually and collectively, to fight for a more just digital future.

We are told that the future of work will be increasingly automated. Algorithms, processing massive amounts of information at startling speed, will lead us to a new world of effortless labour and a post-work utopia of ever expanding leisure. But behind the gleaming surface stands millions of workers, often in the Global South, manually processing data for a pittance.

Recent years have seen a boom in online crowdworking platforms like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Clickworker, and these have become an increasingly important source of work for millions of people. And it is these badly paid tasks, not algorithms, that make our digital lives possible. Used to process data for everything from the mechanics of self-driving cars to Google image search, this is an increasingly powerful part of the new digital economy, although one hidden and rarely spoken of. But what happens to work when it makes itself obsolete. In this stimulating work that blends political economy, studies of contemporary work, and speculations on the future of capitalism, Phil Jones looks at what this often murky and hidden form of labour looks like, and what it says about the state of global capitalism.