Uncovering Labour in Information Revolutions, 1750-2000

Discussion of the current Information Revolution tends to focus on technological developments in information and communication and overlooks both the human labor involved in the development, maintenance and daily use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the consequences of implementing these ICTs. This volume corrects this imbalance by exploring the role, position and divisions of information and communication labor through periods of revolutionary technological change.

'What is fascinating in these accounts is the light they shed on how the identities which result are shaped by the interplay between coercion and resistance, initiative and inertia; how the employers' ad hoc demands for particular discrete skills and competencies are countered by workers' aspirations for coherently demarcated occupations which provide personal identity, development, and status; and how these in turn are shaped by specific histories and geographies ... such discussions could not be more timely.' International Review of Social History