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Archive of stories in "Bossware"

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Visualwebz

·

Jan 2

How Employee Monitoring Is Changing Work — and Why It Matters

Bossware in 2026

How Employee Monitoring Is Changing Work — and Why It Matters

Cory Doctorow

·

Dec 9, 2025

Big Tech joins the race to build the world’s heaviest airplane

Die as Microsoft, or live to become the IBM you overthrew.

A 1960s ad for IBM mainframes, featuring a woman in an office chair seated at a console, surrounded by large processing and storage units. It has been modified. A man in a business suit, impatiently checking his watch, looms out from between two of the cabinets. His head has been replaced with the glaring red eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ The woman’s head has been replaced with a hacker’s hoodie. Both the woman and the man have been tinted red. Image: Cryteria

Cory Doctorow

·

Mar 13, 2025

The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers

It’s here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

A magnified image of the inside of an automated backup tape library, with gleaming racks of silver tape drives receding into the distance. In the foreground is a pile of dirt being shoveled by three figures in prisoner’s stripes. Two of the figures’ heads have been replaced with cliche hacker-in-hoodie heads, from which shine yellow, inverted Amazon ‘smile’ logos, such that the smile is a frown. The remaining figure’s head has been replaced with a horse’s head. Behind the figure is an impatientl

Cory Doctorow

·

Feb 17, 2025

Business school professors trained an AI to judge workers’ personalities based on their faces

The Gilded Age has entered the chat.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine%20A%20phrenological%20illustration%20of%20a%20man%E2%80%99s%20face%20in%20profile,%20with%20his%20skull%20divided%20up%20into%20sections%20with%20illustrations%20of%20what%20each%20area%20is%20meant%20to%20govern,%20e.g.,%20appetite,%20artistic%20aptitude,%20aggression,%20ardor.%20A%20pair%20of%20gleaming%20silver%20calipers,%20wielded%20by%20the%20hostile%20red%20eye%20of%20HAL%209000%20from%20Kubrick%E2%80%99s%20%E2%80%982001:%20A%20Space%20Odyssey,%E2%80%99%20measures%20the%20figure%E2%80%99s%20skull.%20Image:%20Cryteria%20(modified)%20https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

Cory Doctorow

·

Nov 26, 2024

Bossware is unfair (in the legal sense, too)

Neotaylorists wielding digital calipers, breaking the law.

A sweatshop: women sit around a table sewing. Through the lone window, we can see a ‘code waterfall’ effect as seen in the credits of the Wachowskis’ ‘Matrix’ movies. To their left stands a man in a pin-stripe suit, looking at his watch. His body language radiates impatience. His eyes have been replaced by the staring red eyes of HAL9000 from Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Each woman’s head is surmounted by a set of floating Victorian calipers. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wi

Cory Doctorow

·

Sep 27, 2024

Return to office and dying on the job

Denise Prudhomme was dead at her Wells Fargo desk, unnoticed for four days.

A medieval drawing of a horrible torture chamber in which men are being tormented by various diabolical machines. On the wall hangs a poster reading ‘LATE AGAIN! Dependable workers are on the job.’ Through the window peers an impatient man in a sixties vintage executive suit, clutching a sheaf of papers and scowling at his watch. Behind him is the nighttime Manhattan skyline.

In

surveillance and society

by

Lizzie Hughes

·

Sep 24, 2024

Mapping Bossware

In this post, Luke Munn reflects on his article ‘Expansive and Invasive: Mapping the “Bossware” Used to Monitor Workers’, which appeared in…

Mapping Bossware

Cory Doctorow

·

Aug 2, 2024

The reverse-centaur apocalypse is upon us

Microsoft, Oracle, and other bossware dealers are transforming our workplaces with “virtual whips.”

A 1950s steno pool. All of the steno operators’ heads have been replaced with horses’ heads. Beside each stands a labcoated male figure whose head has been replaced with the staring, hostile eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Cory Doctorow

·

Jul 25, 2024

AI’s productivity theater

AI CAN’T do your job, but an AI salesman CAN convince your boss to fire you and replace you with AI.

A medieval tapestry depicting an overseer gesturing imperiously with his stick at three bent peasants who are grubbing in a field. The image has been altered. Contrasts and colors have been pushed into psychedelic pinks, greens and blues. Part of the tapestry fades into a ‘code waterfall’ effect as seen in the credit sequences of the Wachowskis’ ‘Matrix’ movies. The overseer’s head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL 9000 from Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Image: Cryteria (mo

Cory Doctorow

·

Mar 15, 2024

Wellness surveillance makes workers unwell

As ever, the important thing isn’t what the gadget does, it’s who it does it for and who it does it to.

A black and white photo of a steno pool worked by women in mid-1950s haircuts and clothing. Perched on each woman’s desk is a lab-coated figure whose head has been replaced by the red staring eye of HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Each red eye is emitting a cone of red light that engulfs a different woman’s head. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en