Labor

Remember when futurists told us that the internet would result in the “death of distance”? That prophecy has fallen short, as cities remain hubs for commerce and community. The growing geographic consequences of digital technologies puts new demands on decision makers at all levels of government. Bolstering their levels of expertise on these issues is clearly needed and each of the local policy issues raised above would benefit from additional analytical scrutiny.

More than 30 Google employees have joined a petition protesting the company’s plans to build a search engine that complies with China’s online censorship regime. An employee-led backlash against the project has been churning for months at the company, but Nov 27’s petition marks the first time workers at Google have used their names in a public document objecting to the plans. The existence of the project, code-named Dragonfly, was confirmed by chief executive Sundar Pichai in Oct.

Google will never be the same. For two years, regulators, lawmakers, academics and the media have pushed Silicon Valley to alter its world-swallowing ways. But outsiders have few points of leverage in tech; there are few laws governing the industry’s practices, and lawmakers have struggled to get up to speed on tech’s implications for society. Protests by workers are an important new avenue for pressure; the very people who make these companies work can change what they do in the world.

The most remarkable aspect of the walkout at Google may not have been that an estimated 20,000 people participated or that it had global reach, or even that it came together in less than a week. It was the way the organizers identified their action with a broader worker struggle, using language almost unheard-of among affluent tech employees. For decades, Silicon Valley has been ground zero for a vaguely utopian form of individualism — the idea that a single engineer with a laptop and an internet connection could change the world, or at least a long-established industry.

Newsroom employees are more likely to be white and male than US workers overall. There are signs, though, of a turning tide: Younger newsroom employees show greater racial, ethnic and gender diversity than their older colleagues, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of US Census Bureau data. More than three-quarters (77%) of newsroom employees – those who work as reporters, editors, photographers and videographers in the newspaper, broadcasting and internet publishing industries – are non-Hispanic whites, according to the analysis of 2012-2016 American Community Survey data.

The American job market, by a lot of measures, seems very healthy. The unemployment rate is low and, though labor-force participation has been at historically-low levels, recent employment numbers indicate that more people are coming back to the job market. But there are some Americans who have not benefitted from the improving job picture. Even among those with jobs, wage growth – especially for those whose pay is middle-income or less – has been weak, while upper-income workers have fared better.

The Washington Post announced plans to expand its technology coverage, adding 11 new positions for reporters, editors and videographers. The initiative will mean significant growth for The Post’s San Francisco (CA) bureau, where two technology reporters and one editor are now based. The bureau also will now house a video studio. Positions also will be added in Seattle (WA) and Washington (DC).

The Federal Trade Commission this week held another set of hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century. The hearings and public comment process this Fall and Winter will provide opportunities for FTC staff and leadership to listen to experts and the public on key privacy and antitrust issues facing the modern economy. The hearings are intended to stimulate thoughtful internal and external evaluation of the FTC’s near- and long-term law enforcement and policy agenda.

We urgently need to rethink public policy interventions to help countries navigate opportunities and challenges linked to digital advances in the food economy. The promise of digital disruption in agriculture is enormous. Producing food and fiber is a data- and capital-intensive business. On the data side, a farmer’s feel for how to combine seeds, soil, water, and weather can now be complemented by mobile-phone based extension services, remote sensing data, and artificial intelligence.

The Federal Trade Commission announced the agenda for its Hearings initiative with three full-day sessions, co-sponsored with the Global Antitrust Institute and held at the Antonin Scalia Law School of George Mason University in Arlington (VA) on Oct 15-17, 2018. The three-day event will examine the potential for collusive, exclusionary, and predatory conduct in multi-sided, technology-based platform industries.