Event Cancellation Notice

LogOut 2! has been cancelled due to the unpredictable risks related to the COVID-19 virus crisis and in relation to travel plans for many international speakers. We apologize for the inconvenience. We plan to move Log Out! to fall 2020.

Friday March 13, 2020

International Conference

9:00 am - 6:00 pm

Faculty of Information, University of Toronto (140 George Street, Room 728)

Digital capitalism is a terrain of social conflict. Work is increasingly shaped by the technologies used to reorganize the labour process and devise new forms of value generation. Technologies that allow to decompose or outsource jobs make workers increasingly replaceable. New surveillance techniques are used to control and discipline workers, and despotism is on the rise. But a long cycle of struggles has shown that workers don’t passively obey the rules of the digital workplace. 

 

Look no further than drivers in the ride-hailing industry in the streets of the world, domestic workers and freelancers in North America and Asia, food-delivery couriers in Europe and Canada, warehouse workers in urban peripheries across the globe, software engineers from China to California, or game designers and tech workers in cities across North America. The ubiquitous penetration of digital technologies in warehouses, workshops, offices, and app-based workplaces is met with novel workarounds and struggles. New forms of class composition boost solidarity and organizing in the digitally-mediated work environment. Workers log out from and subvert digital labour. 

 

Building on the success of the 2018 edition, Log Out! 2 brings together researchers and workers to discuss how digital capitalism can be confronted and subverted. 

 

SPEAKERS

Sareeta Amrute [University of Washington and Data & Society]

Sreyan Chatterjee [Vidhi Center for Legal Policy, New Delhi]

Nicole Cohen [University of Toronto]

Niels van Doorn [University of Amsterdam]

Silvia Masiero [Loughborough University]

Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya [University of California Berkeley]

Rida Qadri [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]

Greig de Peuter [Wilfrid Laurier University]

Winifred Poster [Washington University St. Louis] 

Jack Qiu [Chinese University of Hong Kong]

Tanay Gandhi [Center for Internet and Society, New Delhi]

Noopur Raval [University of California Irvine]

Michael Siciliano [Queen’s University]

Jamie Woodcock [Open University]

 

WORKER ORGANIZATIONS ROUNDTABLE

Foodsters United

Vice Union

Tech Worker Coalition

Game Workers Unite!

 

Attendance is free. Please confirm your presence on EVENTBRITE

Please see the detailed program below.

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The conference is organized by the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology with support from the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology

 

Organizing committee: Julie Chen, Nicole Cohen, Alessandro Delfanti, Greig de Peuter, Julian Posada, Brendan Smith

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CONFERENCE PROGRAM

 

8:45 am

Welcome + Coffee

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9:15 – 9:30 am

Introduction

Sarah Sharma + Alessandro Delfanti

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9:30 – 10:45 am

Jack Qiu

A Spatial and Historical Mapping of Labor Resistance in the Platform Economy

Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya and JS Tan

Collective Actions in Tech (2000 to Present): Historical and Current Trends in Employee Activism

Winifred Poster

Avatar Workers and Digital Union Organizers

 

11:15 am – 12:30 pm

Michael Siciliano

A (Potential) Labor Politics of Judgment?

Sreyan Chatterjee

Workplace Democracy in the Age of the Sharing Economy

Tanay Gandhi

Collectivisation and Domestic Worker Subjectivities in Gig Work

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1:30 - 3:00 pm

Workers Organizations Roundtable Discussion

Foodsters United, Game Workers Unite!, Tech Worker Coalition, Vice

Moderator: Jamie Woodcock

 

3:00 - 4:00 pm

Rida Qadri

Driving Disruption: How Driver Spatial Strategies Become Algorithmic Resistance in Jakarta's App-Mediated Mobility Market

Silvia Masiero

Digital Platform Labour in Pakistan: Vulnerabilities, Voids and Solidarity Networks

 

4:30 - 6:00 pm

Noopur Raval

Vegan AI – On Ethical Consumption Narratives and Global Solidarity After Platforms

Niels van Doorn

At What Price? Wage Politics and Calculative Power Struggles in On-Demand Food Delivery

Sareeta Amrute

After Veillance

 

Wrap-Up

Julie Chen