The ride-sharing app Uber swept through my city like a tidal wave, overturning decades of immigrant taxi drivers working impossible hours to provide for their families. I met scientists, researchers, engineers, even a doctor who was waiting for his papers. Overnight the streets were jammed with gig economy recruits, moms and dads hunkered behind the wheel, forced by skyrocketing rents to take on a second or even third part-time job. They were part of the new “sharing economy,” a phrase that might have emerged from the Ministry of Truth. Renting your home or workplace, your clothes, even lending money or offering a home delivery service have become keystones of the “fourth industrial revolution.”
The institution cannot love you. Tressie McMillan Cottom
In this short doc, two essays by celebrated Egyptian revolutionary intellectual Alaa Abd El-Fattah pulls the curtain back on the magic act of techno-capitalism, explaining how the inevitable has been plotted and executed. These essays can be found in his profound and heartbreaking essay collection You Have Not Yet Been Defeated (2022).