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9780190691288

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This is a rare book about media technology that puts people first. Through its stirring prose we see how real people manage data and connectivity in their lives. We get a better sense of the consequences and opportunities of widespread dependence on phones and apps. * Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Antisocial Media * Through the experiences of both low and high-wage workers trying to hustle in today's economy, Left to Our Own Devices brilliantly resists political logics that presume tech is a luxury. Ticona's compelling ethnographic account of workers' lives is an essential read for understanding modern precarity. * danah boyd, author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens * This eminently readable, impressive book, based on outstanding fieldwork with precarious workers, deserves to be widely read. Julia Ticona provides a lucid and nuanced account of how such work requires the 'digital hustle' as technologies are not only essential tools in piecing together paid gigs but are also integral to insecure workers' sense of dignity. * Judy Wajcman, London School of Economics * Left to Our Own Devices is an important look into the digital divide at work and the 'hidden similarities and uncomfortable differences' of economic class. Ticona's sharp analysis teaches readers about the painful realities of both high- and low-wage workers being left to navigate precarious jobs with the tools and tech that they have at hand. The result is a book that shows the future of work, today: a logic fuelled by society's worst stereotypes when, as this book argues, our economic futures are tied tightly together. * Gina Neff, University of Cambridge and author of Venture Labor * Left to Our Own Devices will, no doubt, become a groundbreaking book for several disciplinary conversations around the future of work. Drawing on hundreds of interviews of independent workers, beyond the world of ridesharing apps that, otherwise, dominate press and scholarly conversations, Ticona, instead, offers a rare line-of-site into the lives of people picking up algorithmically managed jobs and how they negotiate privacy and the social boundaries between work and home. Her thinking and writing on the nexus of power she analyzes is nothing less than sublime, crafting a new, much needed path of inquiry. * Mary L. Gray, coauthor of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass and Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research *

...this book contains an excellent and detailed methodological appendix, making it particularly useful to readers who focus on labor or qualitative social science research. * W. Kramer, Cornell University, CHOICE * This is a rare book about media technology that puts people first. Through its stirring prose we see how real people manage data and connectivity in their lives. We get a better sense of the consequences and opportunities of widespread dependence on phones and apps. * Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Antisocial Media * Through the experiences of both low and high-wage workers trying to hustle in today's economy, Left to Our Own Devices brilliantly resists political logics that presume tech is a luxury. Ticona's compelling ethnographic account of workers' lives is an essential read for understanding modern precarity. * danah boyd, author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens * This eminently readable, impressive book, based on outstanding fieldwork with precarious workers, deserves to be widely read. Julia Ticona provides a lucid and nuanced account of how such work requires the 'digital hustle' as technologies are not only essential tools in piecing together paid gigs but are also integral to insecure workers' sense of dignity. * Judy Wajcman, London School of Economics * Left to Our Own Devices is an important look into the digital divide at work and the 'hidden similarities and uncomfortable differences' of economic class. Ticona's sharp analysis teaches readers about the painful realities of both high- and low-wage workers being left to navigate precarious jobs with the tools and tech that they have at hand. The result is a book that shows the future of work, today: a logic fuelled by society's worst stereotypes when, as this book argues, our economic futures are tied tightly together. * Gina Neff, University of Cambridge and author of Venture Labor * Left to Our Own Devices will, no doubt, become a groundbreaking book for several disciplinary conversations around the future of work. Drawing on hundreds of interviews of independent workers, beyond the world of ridesharing apps that, otherwise, dominate press and scholarly conversations, Ticona, instead, offers a rare line-of-site into the lives of people picking up algorithmically managed jobs and how they negotiate privacy and the social boundaries between work and home. Her thinking and writing on the nexus of power she analyzes is nothing less than sublime, crafting a new, much needed path of inquiry. * Mary L. Gray, coauthor of Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass and Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research *

Author Information

Julia Ticona is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research investigates the ways that digital communication technologies shape the meaning and dignity of precarious work. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Data & Society Research Institute, and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. In 2017, she collaborated on an amicus brief on behalf of Data & Society for Carpenter vs. U.S. before the US Supreme Court. Her work appears in The New York Times, The Nation, Wired, Slate, Dissent, Jezebel, Fast Company, and NPR's All Things Considered.

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