CHS: EAGER: Understanding the Socio-Technical Ecologies that Form the Human-Technology Frontier of Work: Successes, Opportunities and Training for Future Workers

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

This research will identify how the literature publication industry successfully works in a complex human-technology frontier. Innovations in online technologies have changed employment, with new stakeholders and systems offering opportunities for self-employment. Authors can now independently sell their products but are responsible for all the work that traditional publishing companies used to provide. To work at this frontier, authors use a considerable number of different computer-based tools, to sell but also grow and maintain their audience of consumers. They also use these same tools to find other people to help them in their work, such as getting marketing assistance. This human-technology frontier is an ecology of people and platforms that the writer must be able use each part of, but also collectively manage the totality of the ecology to be successful. This pattern of employment mirrors broader trends in the American workforce, where more people are making money through self-employment in the gig economy. Despite their successful transitions from working for others to self-employment, academic research has largely overlooked how that success happened. Ignoring this human-technology frontier, and the success of people, poses a risk to our understanding of contemporary patterns of technologically mediated work. Further, it limits our ability to build systems to support this type of work, and to help others train for work at this frontier. Focusing on successful cases of self-employment in the gig economy is crucial for building best practice understanding for the future American economy, and the radically transformed literature publication industry is an effective infrastructure for broadening participation of women and minorities in computing. The work will be structured in two themes, addressing a total of five questions. The first theme considers what it means to use specific systems that make up this human-technology frontier. The two sub-questions are (1) What characteristics do successful publication sites have? (2) What do self-employed writers need to know to understand how to leverage the algorithms that invisibly influence their business? The second theme focuses on the work of using the socio-technical ecology of people and tools that is their human-technology frontier. The three sub-questions are (3) What are the new forms of work? (4) Who are the new workers helping them and what do they do? (5) What form do the relationships that tie this socio-technical ecology together take? These questions will be answered through a combination of activities. This multi-dimensional research will review publicly available materials, use qualitative methods including interviews and observation at public events, plus rigorous surveys, and build systems to support work and workers. These activities will take steps to address these questions, that will collectively contribute an understanding of the risks and challenges, as well as the opportunities and rewards, of being self-employed via leveraging an ecology of people and platforms. Outcomes include scholarly products but go beyond that to include systems and training materials to teach Americans how to successfully participate in work at this human-technology frontier. By focusing on overlooked forms of work, the resulting knowledge will reflect a broader view of computing than usual. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.