Ghost Work by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri

GHOST WORK is written by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, senior researchers at Microsoft Research. Mary L. Gray is also a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and a faculty member at Indiana University.  Their book’s subtitle is “How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass” and deals with largely invisible human labor force who work to “make the internet seem smart.” These gig-economy workers complete tasks like tagging images, adding video captions, answering a web-based chat query, or editing a product review, essentially providing employment on demand in a “fusion of code and human smarts.” In this text, Gray and Suri explain the nature of ghost work and profile a number of individual workers, both in the US and India. They refer to a study by PEW Research showing that in 2015 roughly twenty million US adults earned money completing tasks distributed on demand. Thus, Gray and Suri’s work highlights a surprisingly big subset of the workforce that is being transformed due to automation and artificial intelligence advances. However, once this situation is described and it seems pretty clear what is involved, Gray and Suri go on at length with background (including historical context on piecework) which distracts from the book’s overall value. They do argue that the opportunity for exploitation exists, especially when a worker’s goal is twenty dollars (or five dollars per hour) without any kind of benefits and added cost of the time looking for work. This is also further explored in Mary Gray’s opinion piece published in early May by the Washington Post where she notes, “workers in the gig-driven ghost economy have no shared workplace, professional identity or voice to call for change.” Subsequent sections of their new book discuss the power of collaboration and the importance of paying attention to employee welfare and the “double bottom line.” Their conclusion offers a brief outline of several technical and social fixes (e.g., universal healthcare, paid family leave). Well-researched and documented, roughly twenty percent of GHOST WORK’s content is bibliography, notes, appendix and index.

Business and civics classes may find discussion prompts here, particularly in conjunction with more recent studies from PEW about concerns related to automation (2018) or contrasting views on the future economy and democracy (2019). Or, perhaps students could investigate some of the platforms for freelancing, like UpWork. Gray and Suri also write about the creation of “MTurk so that Amazon could not just offer a marketplace of books and other durable goods but make labor itself a service that anyone could find and pay for through the Amazon website.”  That seems highly relevant given yesterday’s announcement by Amazon of a $700 million investment in upskilling for its employees.

Small Animals by Kim Brooks

SMALL ANIMALS is a newly released book by Kim Brooks from which she has adapted an essay, “Motherhood in the Age of Fear,” for The New York Times. That piece was trending for days so clearly the changing ideas about parenthood and the emotions involved are hot topics.  SMALL ANIMALS is a fairly slim text which begins with a chapter on “The Day I Left My Son in the Car” and goes on to examine the consequences for Brooks and her family of what a stranger viewed as criminally negligent parenting.  She shares her personal experiences, but also offers commentary and analysis on the anxious, overprotective, and often competitive parenting that has evolved in America. SMALL ANIMALS is not as much of a “hands-on” parenting guide as I had originally expected, but parents, mothers especially, will relate to many of Brooks’ observations such as when she had dinner with several childless women: “They had different kinds of relationships with different kinds of people. Their identities were still malleable, multidimensional. They were still, in some essential way, the heroes of their own stories.” Likewise, students studying authoritative, authoritarian, and indulgent parenting styles may find this text helpful (Brooks includes about six pages of notes and references) and an insightful perspective on questions of balancing freedom and control with children. Starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal.

Northland by Porter Fox

NORTHLAND by Porter Fox is subtitled “A 4,000 Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border” and given all of the recent news about the United States’ Southern border, I was interested in reading more about the Northern one.  In the advance digital copy I have, Fox refers to both Canadian and American cities within 100 miles of that Northern border. A few (particularly those in Ohio) might surprise you; however, Fox also includes Chicago on his list of cities “in the Northland” and that at least feels incorrect – the nearest Canadian city is Windsor which is about 300 miles away – see this map. Sadly, that reference made me wonder about the other historical, political and scientific “facts” and interpretation in this text especially when I noticed that Fox only devotes a few pages of the book to notes (perhaps he includes more in the final print version?). 

Fox does divide the book into five sections (Dawnland, Sweet-Water Seas, Boundary Waters, Seven Fires, and Medicine Life) to wind his way across the continent from East to West. Along the way, he introduces (but does not really develop stories for) local residents like Milton Chute who harvests sea urchins in Maine or Captain Ross, a helmsman on The Great Lakes. Kirkus gave NORTHLAND a starred review, but I would honestly recommend other titles first. For me, the fictional works of Howard Frank Mosher provide a much keener insight into life along the border. And Dan Egan’s award-winning The Death and Life of The Great Lakes is a recent, outstanding piece of scholarship.  For those interested, Egan will be speaking locally at the Bookstall on Wednesday evening, July 18 at 6:30 pm.