Smart phones, tablets and laptops make work almost inescapable as we are almost always ‘wired’. This also means that work can be more flexible than turning up in an office from nine to five, five days a week. This idea of liquid labour – whereby work is flexible and not bound by traditional constraints of time and space – is examined in Gregg’s “Function Creep: Communication technologies and anticipatory labour in the information workplace.”
New technologies are sold as important, useful and necessary for all workers, but rather than make work life easier, they make work life more accessible and work life leaks further and further into the rest of a workers social life.
A major issue in Gregg’s study was with email. The study focused on email because it was easy for participants to provide tangible evidence. Participants expressed guilt at not answering email promptly and not wanting those they are communicating with to feel ignored. This in turn led to feelings of failure at their work because they could not keep up to date with their emails. However, this was a problem that was felt across the study and across industries.
While this liquid labour is put forward as positive thing that allows workers to utilise their time how they choose, it does have a number of downsides, in particular the work life invading leisure time. Essentially, the more flexible work enabled by technologies is still bound by the same etiquette and ideals, just across a new platform.
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I also focused on liquid labour, I thought it was a very interesting concept. Have a look at my blog for some similar ideas: http://ellenahoban.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/the-networked-character/. I like how you defined liquid labour as “whereby work is flexible and not bound by traditional constraints of time and space” that cleared up some confusion on my behalf when I was researching for my own blog so thanks. The inclusion of that picture was clever and it worked well with supporting your argument.
Perfect image. It’s crazy how our reliance on social media has made us really appreciate the little things, something so simple like a hand-written letter. Scares me how developments change so fast! There’s really no divide between being at work and being at home, feels like more pressure to get more done in 24 hours.
Totally agree with you, the fundamental idea of liquid labour is that we complicate our lives with more and more extensions of ourselves through technology, enriching them in many ways but reducing them in many others. It is tradeoff. In creating new things we create industries around them and force ourselves to learn how to use them, sell them, adapt to them. When the first caveman decided to use a rock to crack a coconut, he damned himself to a life of labour, teaching other people how to crack coconuts.