In Blood In the Machine,@bcmerchant delivers the definitive history of the #Luddites, and the clearest analysis of the automator's playbook, where "entrepreneurs'" lawless extraction from workers is called "innovation" and "inevitable":
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Gig workers are dispatched by apps, their faces closely studied by cameras for unauthorized eye-movements, their pay changed from moment to moment by an algorithm that docks them for any infraction. They are #ReverseCentaurs: workers fused to machines where the machine provides the intelligence and the human does its bidding:
In 1997, Jorn Barger coined the term "web-log" to describe his website "Robot Wisdom," where he logged his journeys around this exciting new digital space called "the web." Two years later, @peterme shortened "web-blog" to "#blog":
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"#ReverseCentaurs," because they're the inverse of the #AI theorists' idea of a "#centaur," that is, a computer-assisted human. Instead, they are human-assisted computers, with their every last move scripted to the finest degree by #bossware that they have to pay for: