The Internet of Things is Coming — yes, but…

..but who will be doing all the work?

This paper argues that automation (machines operating on their own) is being replaced by heteromation (human labor, often low wage or unpaid, being used to fuel the operations of machines: think FoldIt or Google, where we input the data…).

A far cry, the authors point out, from the dreams of “augmented intelligence”, a fusion of human mind and machine-driven computation such as Licklider’s “man-computer symbiosis“.

Unless labor-relations (with the exception of data-entry jobs) is not the right tool to view the on-going developments in interface/wearable tech/body hacking. Does entering a search in Google qualify as “labor”? Does playing a video-game qualify as “labor”? I agree it qualifies as cooperation with machine intelligence, but in this sense, heteromation would actually designate some sort of magical working with digital tools that we’ve become, indeed, quite familiar with–unless I really am my computer’s slave.But then again, aren’t we all?