Strange New Work

What's the most undervalued skill of the 21st-century economy? Moderation.

I very well might be forgetting something. But with more of our lives and work showing up online every day, the way our feeds, data, and connections are moderated is critical to our daily lives. Moderation can be many things—it's how platforms are designed, how content is incentivized or de-incentivized, and how communication between people is mediated. Some moderation is done structurally, some is done with code, but lots of moderation is done by real people all over the world.

In this episode, I take a close look at the skill of moderation, its role in our evolving tech futures, and the politics that complicate this essential work.

Footnotes:
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What is Strange New Work?

Lots of people are talking about the future of work today: remote work, artificial intelligence, white-collar unions, robots, 4-day workweeks... But those things are either here already or will be soon. What about the far future of work? What alien advancements await the office of the future? This podcast wants to boldly go where no other future-of-work podcast has gone. Host Tara McMullin (What Works) brings this limited series about how speculative fiction can help us imagine strange new ways of working and understanding ourselves. We'll explore questions about how we can transform work to be more humane and inclusive. We'll imagine new ways of working together, managing the economy, and providing for others.