Machines Against Measures

Are we doomed because of the new digital technologies used in workspaces? Can we avoid measuring in our work? Or are we trapped in a metrification dystopia? Can we create workspaces that can produce what we prefer in order to use our human effort in ways that support nature and our communities? And if yes, what technologies could we use?

Here, monetary-theorist Irene Sotiropoulou explores and critiques the information and communication means that were created for capitalist profit-making, showing how we can subvert these and use them for our own non-capitalist purposes. Machines Against Measures shows that in times of capitalist restructuring and multiple social reproduction crises, there open up new possibilities to experiment with quantity, measuring, machines and digital technologies, creating new ways of production and transaction. Within these, are ways of sharing and producing that defy many principles of capitalist relations. Using everyday examples from grassroots activity, this book offers new insights into how to be inventive with what we have at hand and be able to reflect on what technologies we truly need, revealing a grounded and practical vision of technology and work, based on re-defining why and how we measure what we do.

Irene Sotiropoulou is Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the Energy & Environment Institute of the University of Hull, UK. She is a heterodox economist with specialty in ecological, feminist, solidarity and non-capitalist economics. She has been awarded a Newton Mobility Grant by the British Academy. She is a Fellow of the GEM-IWG/GEM-Europe and World Social Science Fellowship programs, and a Fellow of the Monetary Research Center (UNWE) at Sofia.