Money Machine: Gig Writing, Automation, and Labor Troubles in Composition

Taking stock of the diminishing material conditions faced by contemporary writers broadly conceived, this article (re)frames writing as a site and a practice of exploited labor. Arguing that writing scholars have often avoided interrogating writing’s links to labor, particularly with respect to declining working conditions and the appropriation of value from workers, I draw attention to the pervasive crisis of writing’s devaluation under late capitalism. To evidence this assessment, I apply political economist Harry Braverman’s conception of the “progressive alienation of the process of production”—the notion that labor is increasingly eroded through capitalism’s advancement—to the scene of contemporary gig writing, specifically Amazon’s microtask platform Mechanical Turk (MTurk). MTurk, I maintain, offers a paradigmatic illustration of contemporary writers’ material exploitation, both for its efforts to de-skill writers and for its conscription of writers to advance their own exploitation by employing them to train generative AI.