Convergence HTF: Making "The Future of Work" Work: A Convergence Workshop on Experiments in Tech Work-Maker Culture, Coworking, Cooperatives, Entrepreneurship & Digital Labor

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

Intelligent, interactive, and highly networked machines -- with which people increasingly share their autonomy and agency -- are a growing part of the landscape, particularly in regard to work. As automation today moves from the factory floor to knowledge and service occupations, insight and action are needed to reap the benefits in increased productivity and increased job opportunities, and to mitigate social costs. The workshop supported by this award will promote convergence by bringing together computer scientists, engineers, and social and behavioral scientists with practitioners and stakeholders to define key challenges and research imperatives at the nexus of humans, technology, and work. Convergence is the deep integration of knowledge, theories, methods, and data from multiple fields to form new and expanded frameworks for addressing scientific and societal challenges and opportunities. This convergence workshop addresses the future of work at the human-technology frontier. This workshop will focus on developing a convergent research agenda aimed at understanding how experiments with new forms of work, such as makerspaces, co-working spaces, incubators, and tech entrepreneurship, are transforming the nature of work, the labor force, and many industries. It will bring together scholars from a diverse set of disciplines, including computer science, anthropology, economics, science and technology studies, sociology of work/labor, and engineering along with stakeholders (entrepreneurs, makers, crowd-workers, and educators) to explore this challenge space and develop convergent approaches to studying it. The workshop will explore questions such as: Which tools, methods, and practices support the prototyping of alternative work models? How might we anticipate and address their unintended consequences? What might be missing in science, technology, engineering, and math education that could better prepare various generations of American workers for a future of life-long learning? This workshop will also identify concrete methods and approaches that enable the partnership and collaboration between such otherwise distinct practices and domains of tech work and research. The workshop's agenda is creatively structured and will facilitate extensive interaction among all participants. The diversity of participants will ensure the group develops a comprehensive research agenda that incorporates both the technical and the social dimensions of these forms of tech work and explores both technical and social solutions.