Uber feels: emotional labor in HBR

I have some thoughts/advice about emotional labor and its role in companies like Uber online in the Harvard Business Review today:

Companies in the service sector have long struggled to get the balance right when it comes to asking for and acknowledging emotional labor. What’s revolutionary (and troubling) about the present moment is how much companies in the on-demand economy, including Uber, are taking emotional labor for granted, especially given its centrality to their ongoing success.

Check out the rest of the article here!

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How is big data like radioactive waste?

Well, it may or may not be…that’s what Anna Lauren Hoffmann and I are pondering in ongoing work on the metaphors we use to think about and talk about data. Check out a status report on the blog of Berkeley’s terrific Center for Technology, Society and Policy (who are generously funding the research!)

Uber in the IJOC

Good news! Alex and I’s long-gestating piece on Uber drivers has finally been published in the International Journal of Communication. Get it while it’s hot!

The Pictures Got Small

If you haven’t already, go look at some GIFs.

Burying the Lede

Some news this week:

• The Uber paper was both mentioned in the LA Times as part of their coverage of the  employment classification settlement, and accepted for publication by the International Journal of Communication. Good news for Alex and I, though the news for Uber drivers is less good (more on that soon).
• After some ups and downs, a group piece I worked on with a whole flock of great scholars on self-quantification has just been published in the April-June issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing (pay-walled, but email me).
• And, I passed – I can’t help anyone in medical distress on an airplane, but I’m now [pretty-much, barring revisions] an honest-to-goodness PhD. So, yay?!