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The computerization of the economy - and everyday life - has transformed the division of labor between humans and machines, shifting many people into work that is hidden, poorly compensated, or accepted as part of being a "user" of digital technology. Through our clicks and swipes, logins and profiles, emails and posts, we are, more or less willingly, participating in digital activities that yield economic value to others but little or no return to us. Hamid Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi call this kind of participation - the extraction of economic value from low-cost or free labor in computer-mediated networks - "heteromation." In this book, they explore the social and technological processes through which economic value is extracted from digitally mediated work, the nature of the value created, and what prompts people to participate in the process.

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Hamid R. Ekbia is Professor of Informatics, Cognitive Science, and International Studies, andDirector of the Center for Research on Mediated Interaction at Indiana University Bloomington. He is the author of Artificial Dreams: The Quest for Non-Biological Intelligence anda coeditor ofBig Data Is Not a Monolith(MIT Press). Bonnie A. Nardi is Professor of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and Cofounder of Center for Research in Sustainability, Collapse-preparedness, and Information Technology there. She is the coauthor of Acting with Technology (MIT Press).

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