[Xmca-l] AI and Activity Theory

[Worthen, Helena Harlow]

For various reasons I’ve been thinking about the uses of CHAT.  Here is a book that is not getting much publicity for some reason, despite the flood of sudden consciousness about the power of AI.  The authors (Bonnie Nardi is an XCMA participant from way back) lay out the analytic framework with a swift trip through Activity Theory:

I did a review of it for the Journal of Labor and Society a few years ago — wow, 2018!

BOOK REVIEW
Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism.  Ekbia, Hamid R.,  Nardi, Bonnie A., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA,  2017. 266 pp., plus index, references, notes (total 280). $35.00

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/wusa.12434__;!!Mih3wA!WweSJJ1IsEaEjE76SJHrOdem3oJuVTYQcynXGFmV73OExVgGyss_hBCosHgZDd4qOL22_Q$ 

An important point that they make is that AI is not just about job replacement, but the value of the free work that is swept up by algorithms to form capital.

Worthen, Helena Harlow
hworthen@illinois.edu<mailto:hworthen@illinois.edu>



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20210411/f7a55a17/attachment.html