January 11-13th in San Francisco, I had the pleasure of attending Microsoft Research’s annual Social Computing Symposium (SCS). We’ve all been to conferences where you skip out during some sessions because of pressing work needs. But at SCS, I had major FOMO; I was even afraid to go to the bathroom in case I’d miss out on something brilliant.
Microsoft Research’s Andres Monroy-Hernandez orchestrated a session on the future of crowdsourcing. In the first movement, Andres introduced three people who he found by posting gigs on various peer economy platforms. Steve uses TaskRabbit, Gretchen is a Mechanical Turker, and Katrina swears by oDesk.
Each of these are online platforms that enable people to monetize skills and assets they already have. Each participant shared poignant stories; Steve needed income after having burned through his savings from a years-long misdiagnosis of esophageal cancer. Gretchen organizes her hours around other priorities, like teaching dance. oDesk
enabled Katrina to increase the range of her transcription work (before, she focused mostly on medical transcription). Each person had their ups and downs with each platform. And for me, as a researcher who has spent the last few years drawing out worker support in the peer economy, Steve’s comments were particularly profound. Until this symposium—until he had to articulate his experience to an attentive crowd—Steve had never thought of his work as part of a constituency. It was clear from his remarks that he felt empowered by this realization.
Soon after, two researchers and two tech company folks presented their work. Merrie Ringel Morris shared her findings on mTurk work for those living with disabilities, breaking accessibility down by levels.
Niloufar Salehi showcased DYNAMO, a fantastic self-organizing platform for mTurkers that has already proven itself.
I took part in the third movement, a debate framed by researchers Cecilia Aragon and Michael Bernstein. Cecilia wrote a short scenario of a gig economy world, a dystopic sci-fi with atrocious income inequality. Michael presented the possibilities and resources that become more widely accessible because of a gig economy world. We debated whether the future of crowdsourced labor would be utopia or dystopia. We were randomly selected to argue one side or the other. At first, it felt a bit maudlin. However, the conversation soon took a serious turn into how to make that gig economy, p2p world a good one, especially as many attendees’ children have no choice but to work in that world someday. The overall vibe in the room was that there needs to be design interventions to keep this future from becoming dystopic.
And I hope it goes somewhere. I’ve been privy to many conversations about the future of work, which always includes the peer/sharing economy. However, what I often see is either:
- denial, where people want to negotiate with this dystopic future by arguing about how unethical and immoral it is, or
- paralysis, where we assume the future will be the current trajectory, and get bummed out about our lack of influence over it.
No organization owns this effort right now, so where can we start? Let’s each start with intervention ideas. What can we explore to support this new workforce? Do we need to … construct relaxation lounges for providers who run from gig to gig (ie. Postmates, TaskRabbit)? … find ways to lower the cost of assistive technologies (ie. re-configurable keyboards, braille display technology) so people with varying abilities can participate on digital delivery platforms (i.e.: oDesk, Mechanical Turk)? Engage companies in creating tailored portals for economically marginalized populations that also want to participate? Build more power outlets into public spaces so that this highly mobile and mobile-reliant workforce can recharge devices? Redesign platforms’ on-boarding processes so that people with some criminal history do not automatically become disqualified?
Whatever happens, providers need to be at the center of any design process or intervention. Only if it passes their vetting does it make sense to then map intervention components to the groups that make most sense: providers, private companies, social sector organizations, labor advocacy, government, academia, and more.
My own hope is that the collective sentiment we had about interventions doesn’t stay within the SCS’ walled garden; I hope that some real forward momentum comes out of the symposium.
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Denise Cheng is an applied researcher and civic strategist. She focuses on the viability of future, alternative work models, civic engagement, and multimedia storytelling/distribution. Denise holds an M.S. in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and is a research affiliate with the MIT Center for Civic Media.
