New social relations of digital technology and the future of work: Beyond technological determinism

TL;DR

This editorial introduction to a *New Technology, Work and Employment* special issue argues that technological determinism persists residually in work and employment research despite widespread rejection, and proposes the social shaping of technology (SST) approach as a corrective. It identifies three problematic trends—rigid periodisation, a narrow conceptual repertoire, and a narrow empirical focus—and previews the issue's contributions.

Key findings

As an editorial, the paper's claims are conceptual rather than empirical:

• Technological determinism persists in three forms: "overly rigid periodisations (such as 'platform capitalism'), a narrow conceptual repertoire (which reifies notions like 'algorithmic control') and a constricted empirical focus."
• The "algorithmic" prefix has been applied to an increasingly diverse set of work aspects—"algorithmic governance," "algorithmic surveillance," "algorithmic boss," "algorithmic labour," "algorithmic information asymmetries," "algorithmic pricing," "algorithmic uncertainty," "algorithmic despotism"—reifying technology and concealing distinctions.
• Divergent findings on algorithmic control are rarely debated: Kellogg et al. (2020, p. 388) describe an "algorithmic cage" that is "more encompassing, instantaneous, interactive, opaque and disintermediating" than historical regimes, whereas Wood et al. (2018, p. 15) argue remote gig work "is a long way from being an 'assembly line in the head'" and emphasise autonomy, task variety and flexibility.
• Non-algorithmic technologies matter: Mathew's (2008) study of New York taxi drivers shows compulsory GPS tracking and credit card payment roll-out shifted power to firms and brokers without any algorithms, predating platform technology.

Methods

Conceptual/editorial article: a critical review of literature on technology, the labour process and industrial relations, drawing on SST and SCOT traditions (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999; Williams & Edge, 1996; Orlikowski, 1992) to diagnose determinist tendencies. It then summarises the special issue's contributions, which span the global South (India, China, Chile) and global North (Italy, Norway/UK, Belgium) and use labour process, political economy, STS/SST and ethnographic approaches. No primary data collection is reported; the paper notes the special issue was supported by the ESRC (grant ES/S012532/1) via the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre.

Limitations

The paper states that snapshot case studies and ethnographic methods "almost inevitably produce snapshot views of the deployment of new technology, but are nevertheless used as the bases for generalisation," and that longitudinal or "biography of artefacts" research is difficult because "the timescales of technology development, implementation and use are far longer than the duration of typical research projects" (Williams, 2019, p. 155). It also notes that technology design is temporally and spatially separated from work sites, contributing to "the illusion of exogeneity of technology." Evident from the text: as an introduction, it offers no original empirical evidence, and its critique of the field rests on illustrative examples rather than systematic review.