Henry Snow, US Labour and economic historian, reminds us that he idea of a building designed round a central inspection tower “was a workplace before it was a prison”, the brainchild of the philosopher’s mechanically minded younger brother Samuel, who fascinated by shipbuilding, undertook a high-level apprenticeship in the late 18th century that equipped him with “both a trademan’s knowledge and bourgeois European science”. Whether on Caribbean plantations in the seventeenth century or in Amazon Warehouses today, the powerful have constantly developed new techniques to control workers- and new justifications for doing so. Ideas of control perfected on the factory floor … Continue reading Extending the algorithmic control of Amazon warehouses into every corner of our lives