Online labour markets represent a rapidly growing feature of the world of work. Dozens of international online market places exist for the buying and selling of labour. The number of hours worked on oDesk.com (now known as Upwork), a leading… Continue Reading
As part of our project on digital labour and development, Isis Hjorth, Mark Graham, Helena Barnard and I have been meeting and interviewing over a hundred people who do freelance work over the Internet, through platforms such as Upwork and… Continue Reading
To build on Vili’s earlier post about the geographies of virtual gold farming, I want to share a bit of our spatial analysis (conducted with the help of Claudio Calvino and Stefano De Sabbata) of the data we are using in… Continue Reading
Gold farming, game labour, playbor – these terms are used to refer to the harvesting of online game items, currencies, and characters with a view to selling them to earn income. As part of a new research project on online… Continue Reading
Last week I attended an insightful workshop “IT sourcing and development: New Drivers, Models and Impacts” at the University of Manchester. The idea of this workshop was to revisit IT outsourcing which has become a significant industry and employer in… Continue Reading
The photographs above come from a conference for online freelancers that Isis, Vili, and I attended in Manila a few days ago. The conference hall was packed with freelancers and potential freelancers looking to hear about ‘the future of work.’… Continue Reading
The picture above was taken in Pasig City in the Philippines. The poster advertising free wifi is symbolic of the changing connectivities of a country in which more than 30 million people are now Internet users. Whereas the advert on the the left is symbolic of… Continue Reading
