The City as Feed

A response to Dan Hill’s The City is my Homescreen

Dan looks at the city through the lens of user-centered-design as being an inside-out virus that reshapes the city.

We consider how Uber is good user-design but creates bad city-design.

But there is another feature here. The feed. The worker.

The flows of workers as feeds. (junkfeeds!)

The city as feed - the worker is forced to proceed from job to job dictated by an algorithm and a never-ending stream of notifications.

This is rewiring the city via Uber, and rewiring the worker via Upwork.

Job Job Job Job

This feed

There is no we, only an infinite I

There is no water cooler for Uber drivers. No place for Uber drivers to gather and discuss with others. No place for them to identify as Uber drivers. They are just humans stuck in black shells racing around the city according to the whims of a digtial algorithm

Think this comes from a Bifo quote?

Service Workers

Service workers - this is a technology term!

It’s terminated when not in use, and restarted when it’s next needed, so you cannot rely on global state within a service worker’s onfetch and onmessage handlers.

Even uses the language of promises!

This is, truly how service workers are viewed.

Story of lime scooter fixer when job just gets removed.