( here is my full length interview. If you want to skip around, an annotated list is below)
Uber has disrupted the taxi industry around the world. But its way of doing business may be reshaping other industries. Alex Rosenblat is a technology ethnographer, someone who learns from strangers and analyzes the narratives that shape their actual place in society. She took hundreds of rides with hundreds of drivers around the USA. She has decided that drivers are not actually free-wheeling entrepreneurs but constrained workers managed and manipulated by algorithms. “Uberland: How Algorithm’s Are Rewriting the Rules of Work” explores the brave new world that Uber is shaping.
Hail a Ride
Change the workplace
Social Scientist Alex Rosenblat is coming to Town Hall November 27th, 2018, 7:30 at University Lutheran Church in the Udistrict in Seattle.
Perhaps she will arrive by Uber.
Here is an annotated list of the interview if you want to skip around to particular points.
1:10: General chat about traveling east and west
2:33: Rides and interviews for research and getting around
3:30: How it uses its customers
4:30 Uber brings the culture of silicon valley to the world of work
9:26: How the algorithms work in Uberland
17:02:Will robots come for your job and how algorithms drive engagement
21:37: A macho culture emerges and how it blurs disruption and manipulation
27:10: How can workers respond?
32:02: How much do drivers actually make?
34:66: Whose cars are on the road and what does it cost?
36:33: The difference between Uber and Lyft
38:44: Ghost cars and the narratives Uber uses to respond to charges of illegal actions
41:51: How do other companies see Uber?
47:13: Why this industry captured her interest
49:20: Uber’s language blurs categories between workers and users.
51:28: Next for Rosenblat are children’s stories, parodies about technologies.