User Profile

Wythoff argues that a closer analysis of user techniques (how we directly engage with new and emerging technology) offers ways to respond to the creeping feeling that technology utterly controls users. He recognizes the power of "the feed" or "the scroll" or of AI, but he doesn't think that power leads to complete user disempowerment. The techniques users develop while engaging with tools are worth paying attention to as they open up space for rethinking how these tools can be put to use. He makes the argument with fascinating historical research into other technological moments, including a deep dive into the term "gadget."

The closing chapter takes up the efforts of community technology projects (especially the Philly Community Wireless project that Wythoff helps organize) as an answer to the solutions offered by "digital minimalism." The latter is often about individualized approaches to weaning oneself off tech, and it is also often about relying on more technological solutions to solve the problem (see the "Brick" that I keep seeing ads for that is supposed to keep us off our phones). Wythoff argues that "community tech" presents a more collective response and that it recognizes the possibility that people/communities/users can develop techniques together.

The deck is probably stacked against "users," but that doesn't mean the game is completely unwinnable. Examining and developing new techniques together offers one path forward for those interested in building potential solutions.

Bookwyrm is actually a good example of the kind of solution Wythoff has in mind.

This book, by my Rutgers colleague Eric Blanc, takes up some of the difficulties of labor organizing in the contemporary social and political climate. He argues for a worker-to-worker model of organizing, which relies on training workers to organize one another rather than hiring large numbers of staff to establish unions and organize workers. A staff-heavy model is expensive and doesn't scale, and a worker-to-worker model is not only more efficient but also (obviously) draws on workers' direct experience.

To me, the most interesting part of the argument is about "decentralization." Workers are mostly, unlike in the 1930s, not gathered in large numbers in hubs of labor (factories, etc.). How do we organize workers when there's no central "shop floor" let alone social clubs or other spaces where everyone gathers on a regular basis? More than this, I'd argue that workers aren't necessarily "decentralized" in many industries. Instead, they are dispersed, especially those who are working from home. This is a massive challenge for contemporary organizing, and Blanc offers the worker-to-worker model as a way to try to answer it.

He also is pretty optimistic about "digital tools" in this book. I am not. I see how zoom trainings can get people started with organizing even if an organization can't afford to send an organizer for face-to-face training. And maybe Instagram gets the word out about a union election and/or campaign. But more than anything, digital technologies seem to be mostly exacerbating the problems of dispersal, alienation, and isolation. When it comes down to it, f2f organizing is the key, and it's really difficult to do that when everyone is in different places and different times. Blanc knows this, and this is why he turns to the digital. He also recognizing that digital tools can't replace tried-and-true methods of organizing. But I am just more skeptical than him that we should rely on those tools much at all given that they are contributing to the problems we're trying to address.