Goodbye California?: The New Tech Worker Movement




Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society: Audio Fishbowl show

Summary: A recent wave of worker actions at major tech firms have challenged company contracts with the Pentagon, ICE, and other government agencies; organized for safe and equitable workplaces, free from sexual harassment and discrimination; and demanded better wages, benefits, and working conditions for both white and blue collar contractors. Scholar and a founding editor of Logic magazine Moira Weigel places these actions in context, drawing on several years of research and writing on the movement. She proposes that these actions point to the need for new frameworks for interpreting the culture or world view of the tech industry—frameworks beyond "The Californian Ideology" that has dominated since the 1990s. She shares several recently proposed alternatives for thinking about "tech work" (e.g. platform capitalism, surveillance capitalism, data colonialism) that members of tech worker organizations themselves have studied and drawn on. This talk is moderated by recent Berkman Klein Fellow, Yarden Katz. More info on this event here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2019-02-26/goodbye-california