Digital Labor

"Digital Labor addresses a major issue arising from the convergence of technology, the academy and labor: the increasing vocationalization of the liberal arts. The convergence of technology with English or Literature programs often reshapes academic departments into vocational centers where students learn how to function in the digital work world using the software of the day (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, etc.). Students are being converted directly into labor; a vexing situation considering that this approach seems to guarantee armies of low-wage laborers for emerging digital sweatshops inviting those of us working in the academy to be complicit in their exploitation. This short web-essay focuses on both the intellectual and vocational challenges educators must account for when preparing students for the digital labor market." -- from Digital Labor, Introduction

"Michelle Glaros is an Assistant Professor of English at Dakota State University where she conducts the Electronic Writing Workshop. Her work focuses on inventing, exploring, and promoting an electronic conception of writing for which she proselytizes vigorously. In addition, she fancies herself a sometime digital labor activist. She is the 'author' of Being in Pictures, a web-specific writing, and a founding member of the feminist video collective FemTV. Glaros currently engages in work on SunSpots, a web-specific writing that applies certain cinematic techniques to the writing space of the WWW. SunSpots hopes to illuminate some connections between fan writing, invention, and the WWW's 'problematics of validity.'" -- from frAme, Issue 5, 2001