11 research outputs found
The quantified self: what counts in the neoliberal workplace
Implementation of quantified self technologies in workplaces relies on the ontological premise of Cartesian dualism with mind dominant over body. Contributing to debates in new materialism, we demonstrate that workers are now being asked to measure our own productivity and health and wellbeing in art-houses and warehouses alike in both the global north and south. Workers experience intensified precarity, austerity, intense competition for jobs, and anxieties about the replacement of labour-power with robots and other machines as well as, ourselves replaceable, other humans. Workers have internalized the imperative to perform, a subjectification process as we become observing, entrepreneurial subjects and observed, objectified labouring bodies. Thinking through the implications of the use of wearable technologies in workplaces, this article shows that these technologies introduce a heightened Taylorist influence on precarious working bodies within neoliberal workplaces
Digital Labour and Workers’ Organisation
The rise of digital labour is changing how people work and provides new challenges for worker organisation. Beyond this, there is disagreement on what exactly constitutes digital labour and its impact more broadly. These processes are differentiated on a global scale, with different dynamics in the global North and South. This chapter address these questions in two parts, drawing on the Autonomist Marxist concept of class composition. First, it examines the technical composition of digital labour, looking at the organisation of digital labour process by capital. This covers four examples: customer service operators, software developers, outsourced moderation workers, and crowdsourcing workers – while also focusing on India and China. Second, it discusses the political composition of these workers, focusing on forms of resistance, struggle, and organisation. The example of software developers is considered here due to the role they play in creating and maintaining the software upon which other labour processes rely. The chapter argues that these components provide important insights into how capital is reorganising work through the application of digital technologies –these are situated as the result of class struggle, rather than neutral tools. It emphasises the potential of new forms of resistance and organisation in a digital context
Estimation of the effective orientation of the SHG source in primary cortical neurons
In this paper we provide, for the first time to our knowledge, the effective orientation of the SHG source in cultured cortical neuronal processes in vitro. This is done by the use of the polarization sensitive second harmonic generation (PSHG) imaging microscopy technique. By performing a pixel-level resolution analysis we found that the SHG dipole source has a distribution of angles centered at θe =33.96°, with a bandwidth of ∆θe = 12.85°. This orientation can be related with the molecular geometry of the tubulin heterodimmer contained in microtubules.This work is supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya and by the Spanish government
grant TEC2006-12654. Authors also acknowledge The Centre for Innovacio i Desenvolupament Empresarial - CIDEM (RDITSCON07-1-0006), Grupo Ferrer and the European Regional Development Fund. This research has been partially supported by Fundació Cellex Barcelona.Peer reviewe
Science as a Commons: Improving the Governance of Knowledge Through Citizen Science
In recent decades, problems related to the accessibility and sustainability
of science have increased, both in terms of the acquisition and dissemination of
knowledge and its generation. Policymakers, academics, and, increasingly, citizens
themselves have developed various approaches to this issue. Among them, citizen
science is distinguished by making possible the generation of scientific knowledge
by anyone with an interest in doing so. However, participation alone does not
guarantee knowledge generation, which represents an epistemological challenge
for citizen science. Simultaneously, economic and socio-institutional difficulties in
science governance and maintenance have grown. To solve those problems, several
market elements have been introduced, a solution rejected by those who consider
science as a public good that states must guarantee. Alternatively, research and work
on the commons are growing worldwide, the concept being extended from natural resources to knowledge resources. In this chapter, we propose science as a commons, underlining the essential role of citizen science. Difficulties also apply to
citizen science itself, but the increasing development of a multitude of projects based
on cooperation favours the conditions required for its sustainability and quality.
Our philosophical proposal is based on empirical knowledge about citizen science
coupled with socio-economic concepts, according to a sociopolitical epistemology.Maite Pelacho’s contribution was supported by the Spanish Foundation of
Science and Technology and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FCT-18-14225). Hannot
Rodríguez’s contribution was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
and the European Regional Development Fund (FFI2015-69792-R), the Vice-rectorate for
Research of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (PPGA19/23, and GIU19/051), and
the Basque Government’s Department of Education (IT1205-19)Peer reviewe