iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

The Tech Solidarity Lab is on the move! This fall, I'm joining the University of Michigan School of Information as the John Derby Evans Associate Professor. I'm grateful to the students and colleagues at CMU for what we built together. The work continues, just a little deeper in the Rust Belt. 💙

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Tim Newman @tnewmsblues.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Highly recommend this by @morganklauss.bsky.social @perhaxis.bsky.social @milamiceli.bsky.social et al re: AI data workers “caught within a regime of entrapment: interconnected mechanisms that make it difficult for workers to leave or improve positions” www.morgan-klaus.com/pdfs/pubs/Ka...

Abstract: The rapid expansion of the AI industry relies heavily on the production, verification, and maintenance of data, otherwise known as "data work". Companies outsource and offshore this work through global AI supply chains that operate under exploitative conditions. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Kenyan data workers across platforms and BPOs, this paper examines how such conditions take shape and persist. We argue that workers are caught within a regime of entrapment, a system of interconnected mechanisms that make it difficult for workers to leave or improve their positions. These mechanisms include the push to invest in the promise of ‘AI’ jobs, the use of precarious contracts to govern workers, the capture of regulatory institutions, and the exploitation of global labor arbitrage. Using complementary lenses of neoliberal governmentality, precarity, and supply chain capitalism, we analyze why labor mobilization in this sector remains uniquely constrained. We conclude by outlining an orientation for research and scholarly practice that can support workers’ organizing efforts and contest the structural conditions sustaining this regime.

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Association for Computing Machinery @acm.org · 16/06/2026

How do Generative AI and AR face filters exclude LGBTQ+ individuals? What are ways to challenge AI bias? “Un-Straightening Generative AI” and “That Moment of Curiosity” provide answers in the next part of our #PrideMonth Digital Library series.

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Anthropology of Work Review @anthropologyofwork.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Check out Magally Miranda's new article in #Anthropology of Work Review "Familiar Interfaces: Norms of Domesticity and Immigrant Latina Workers on #Care Work #Platforms" anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Dr. Jordan Taylor @jordant.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Great coverage from Brian Merchant on our research into the impacts of generative AI on professional visual artists ⬇️

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Congratulations to @jordant.bsky.social who just defended his dissertation! It examines how queer artists engage with generative AI through adaptation, resistance, and refusal, while also critiquing how underlying models encode narrow standards of "taste" that constrain aesthetic possibilities.

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Hot off the presses! In this new piece, we trace neoliberal automation in bus transit—"driverless" pushes that accelerate class decomposition and weaken collective bargaining, masked as innovation. These threaten wages and safety, yet workers are resisting and advancing more just alternatives.

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Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

📣 New! In seeking to accelerate AI infrastructure projects in PA, efforts that bypass local governance can harm communities. @cellllla.bsky.social & @mwoluchem.bsky.social offer an alternative framework that better aligns state infrastructure goals with local needs. datasociety.net/library/last...

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beth semel @bethmsemel.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

interested in questions of tech, labor, and worker futures? on April 10 in Princeton i'm hosting an outstanding lineup of panelists at "the future of (data) work," where speakers will discuss the ethnographic, archival, and participatory action research they've conducted with data + tech workers

poster for "the future of (data) work." top right corner contains event info: April 10, 9:30-4:30pm, Aaron Burr Hall 219." Under the title is the conference description: "The rapid expansion and commercialization of artificial intelligence systems has been enabled by the upscaling of data work, defined by Miceli and Posada as 'the labor involved in the collection, curation, classification, labeling, and verification of data.' Amidst debates about how 'intelligence machines' will impact the global workforce, this conference brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars and organizers to examine the histories, topographies, and lived realities of data work around the world, centering the people behind the platforms that dominate our present to imagine alternative futures." Underneath this text is the list of panelists and their affiliations: Beth Semel, Organizer, (Assistant Professor, Dept of Anthro, Richard Stockton Picentennial Preceptor) Hunter Akridge Research Assistant (Grad Student, Dept of Anthro), Alex Hanna (DAIR), Seyi Olojo (UC Berkeley), Cindy Kaiying Lin (Georgia Institute of Tech), Julian Posada (Yale), Shivani Kapania (CMU), Samantha Dalal (Princeton CITP) Lilly Irani (UCSD), Sarah Fox (CMU). The background image, from Hanna Barakat/Archival Images of AI/AIxDesign, is a picture of hands yanking invisible strings through a rare earth mineral with a microchip superimposed over it set against. On the bottom of the poster are the sponsors (Princeton AI Lab, Princeton Dept of Anthro), and a QR code for the program).

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Dr. Jordan Taylor @jordant.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

🎨💻 What is a “high-quality” or “aesthetic” image according to generative AI developers? Happy to share that our investigation of the LAION-Aesthetics Predictor has been accepted at #FAccT2026! 🧵 (1/5) Take a look at a preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2601.09896

Screenshot of an academic paper titled "The Algorithmic Gaze of Image Quality Assessment: An Audit and Trace Ethnography of the LAION-Aesthetics Predictor" authored by Jordan Taylor, William Agnew, Maarten Sap, Sarah E. Fox, and Haiyi Zhu

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Natalia Luka @nataliyan.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

A big morning for archiving and advocacy in tech! This project by @cellllla.bsky.social and others documents workplace surveillance incidents across the U.S., as well as resources for action: wsit.work

wsit.work

Workplace Surveillance Incident Tracker

The Workplace Surveillance Incident Tracker documents incidents of workplace surveillance to enhance transparency and accountability

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Linda Huber @puellaludens.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

New commentary by @cellllla.bsky.social, @perhaxis.bsky.social and myself: "The tech worker movement and the rise of the tech oligarchy". www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

The tech worker movement and the rise of the tech oligarchy

Published in Science as Culture (Ahead of Print, 2026)

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

What’s augmentation-washing? In a new piece out at @techpolicypress.bsky.social, we argue that “augmentation” language reframes automation as empowerment—masking real shifts in control, workload, and labor relations.

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Cella @cellllla.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

It’s the last day of #CSCW2025! Come by at 2:30pm at the Perspectives on Data Privacy session to watch me discuss the resistance tactics that workers use to circumvent surveillance and how they build towards collective action

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Cella @cellllla.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

👋 Hello #CSCW2025! I’ll be presenting my paper on tech worker organizing on Monday at 4:30pm in the Advocacy Work session and my dissertation work “From the Future of Work to the Future of Labor: Centering Worker Resistance in Age of AI and Automation” at the demos/posters reception! Please say hi!

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Don't miss this chance! Cella is a force and any department would be lucky to have her.

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

🎉 Thrilled to share that @samshorey.bsky.social and I have signed a book contract with @ucpress.bsky.social through their Co-Opting AI Series! "Reparative AI" is about what happens when AI breaks, and how repair becomes resistance, sabotage, and a challenge to whether AI is worth saving at all.

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

Couldn’t be prouder of Franky Spektor, who successfully defended her dissertation today: "Documentation as Direct Action: Alternative Data Practices for the Labor Movement"! 🎉Her work surfaces the risks of data-driven evidentiary standards that too often obscure, rather than reveal, workplace harm.

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Cella @cellllla.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

What can #CSCW learn from tech workers who have been involved in collective action and unionization about how to make transformative change within our field? My new #CSCW2025 paper with Mona Wang, Anna Konvicka, and Sarah Fox seeks to answer this question. Pre-print: arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12579

Screenshot of the CSCW 2025 paper "The Future of Tech Labor: How Workers are Organizing and Transforming the Computing Industry"

CELLA M. SUM, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
ANNA KONVICKA, Princeton University, USA
MONA WANG, Princeton University, USA
SARAH E. FOX, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Abstract: The tech industry’s shifting landscape and the growing precarity of its labor force have spurred unionization efforts among tech workers. These workers turn to collective action to improve their working conditions and to protest unethical practices within their workplaces. To better understand this movement, we interviewed 44 U.S.-based tech worker-organizers to examine their motivations, strategies, challenges, and future visions for labor organizing. These workers included engineers, product managers, customer support specialists, QA analysts, logistics workers, gig workers, and union staff organizers. Our findings reveal that, contrary to popular narratives of prestige and privilege within the tech industry, tech workers face fragmented and unstable work environments which contribute to their disempowerment and hinder their organizing efforts. Despite these difficulties, organizers are laying the groundwork for a more resilient tech worker movement through community building and expanding political consciousness. By situating these dynamics within broader structural and ideological forces, we identify ways for the CSCW community to build solidarity with
tech workers who are materially transforming our field through their organizing efforts.

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Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Out now in the AI Hype special issue in Digital Journalism, "Automating Essential Work:" 📰 10 years of news stories 📈 tech company execs become sources when the industry shifts from traditional automation to robots 👷🏻‍♀️ 0 quotes from on-the-ground workers doi.org/10.1080/2167...

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

* STS folks! * CMU is hiring up to 2 tenure track faculty focused on: the intersection of tech & social change, the environmental and social impacts of science, tech, and medicine. They will be housed in History, a department of both historians and anthropologists. apply.interfolio.com/170040

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Emma Strubell @strubell.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

I did an interview w/ Pittsburgh's NPR station to share some of my views on the topic of the McCormick/Trump AI & Energy summit at CMU tomorrow. Despite being hosted at the university, there will not be opportunities for our university experts to contribute viewpoints at the event.

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Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

New! Govt tech purchasing has never been more high stakes, yet decisions about it rarely include public input. @megyoung0.bsky.social‬, w Sarah Fox, Vinhcent Le, & Oscar J. Romero Jr, explain why such input is essential, and outline specific opportunities & tactics. datasociety.net/library/gear...

Text on a pink background that shows the title of the new primer: "Gear Shift: Driving Change in Public Sector Technology through Community Input" by Meg Young, Sarah Fox, Vinhcent Le, and Oscar J. Romero Jr. It includes a quote: "The path forward for equitable government technology requires a fundamental gear shift."

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Nick Seaver @nickseaver.website · 17/06/2025

moral crumple zones as a service

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Lilly Irani @gleemie.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Apply to work at the UCSD Labor Center as a Program and Communications Manager! Applications close in about a week. laborcenter.ucsd.edu/get-involved...

laborcenter.ucsd.edu

Careers

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Tamara Kneese @tamigraph.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

New pub out from @davidthewid.bsky.social and me. We suggest that computer science should learn from anthropology’s critical examination of its colonial roots. AI for good projects like low resource NLP resemble early salvage anthropology projects, where anthros tried to preserve “dying” languages

dl.acm.org

Salvage Anthropology and Low-Resource NLP: What Computer Science Should Learn from the Social Sciences | Interactions

This forum focuses on the conditions and futures of the labor underpinning technology production and maintenance. We welcome standalone articles as well as interviews and conversations about all tech ...

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Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · 05/12/2024

Students should study the humanities not because it makes them better workers but because it rips you open and breaks your brain and changes everything you thought you knew. I *promise* you this. I *promise* it has this ability, no matter how smart you think you are. I have seen it countless times.

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