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Book Cover for: The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers, Xenia Benivolski

The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers

Xenia Benivolski

What will the world look like after Amazon? We asked the corporation's workers. With over 1.6-million employees, Amazon is one of the largest corporate empires to have ever existed. But while the company tells a utopian story about its gifts to the world, its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions of overwork, insecurity, and relentless surveillance. As workers' movements and community groups around the world rise to challenge Amazon's power, the nine stories in this book, written by rank-and-file Amazon workers, speculate on what the future holds for people and the planet. For more information as well free ebook, audiobook and podcast versions of The World After Amazon, visit http: //afteramazon.world. Since it was founded in 1994 as an online bookshop, Amazon has aggressively transformed not only the way we read but also fields as diverse as logistics, film and television, artificial intelligence, groceries and web services. In addition to the 1.6 million drivers, sorters, coders, and others who are on its payroll, millions more rely on the company as independent contractors, trapped in Amazon's gamified platforms. Since its earliest origins, Amazon's founder and current Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos has infused the firm with the spirit of science fiction. The genre has inspired the iconic billionaire to invest his fortune in a private space company that promises to take humanity to the stars. But here on earth, the corporation's workers are compelled to build a future that will exclude them. What happens when workers reclaim the power to tell their own stories and reclaim their right to author their own futures? The Worker as Futurist Project supports current and former workers at Amazon to write short, speculative fiction as an act of resistance. This book is the result of a series of workshops held in 2023. "Milton Friedman knew the future was up for grabs, and that in crisis, 'ideas lying around' moved from the periphery to center in an eyeblink. Two can play that game: imagining a better future is a way to seize that future, and sadly, we are in for innumerable crises where our 'ideas lying around' can come to the fore." - Cory Doctorow "These wonderfully various and surprising stories prove that, if we don't manage to find our way beyond Amazon, it won't be for lack of political imagination. In this volume, the labor conditions of the present give us a unique vantage point on possible futures." Mark McGurl

Book Details

  • Publisher: Lulu.com
  • Publish Date: Aug 20th, 2024
  • Pages: 238
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.00in - 4.25in - 0.54in - 0.43lb
  • EAN: 9781445232331
  • Categories: Science Fiction - Collections & Anthologies

About the Author

Benivolski, Xenia: - In Ibrahim Alsahary's "The Iron Uprising," robots and humans come together in common struggle... and in love. Cory Gluck's "Thalia in Albios" depicts one woman's journey through a dystopian future, from terrified housecleaner to fearless revolutionary. What could go wrong if scientists tried to artificially enhance the empathy that people have lost in an age of techno-isolation? In Dartagnan's "Relentless" we find out. In Anneth Chepkoech's "The World After Amazon" a young migrant boy dreams of creating an online retail platform that respects and values workers like his father. Pearl Cecil Sigur Ramsey's "ANYBODY HOME?" presents a podcast from the end of the world, where corporations can even exploit screams of rebellion. "Forever on the Clock" tells the story of a worker who quits Amazon only to discover the prison where he is being held looks very familiar... In "The Dark Side of Convenience" workers are kept so busy working for Amazon they don't realize the apocalypse the company is helping to create. After Amazon's fall, a local ruler uses violence and fear to dominate the island of Zanjara. It's up to his son to find "The Museum of Prime" and restore the balance. "New Entry" takes us to the far future, where humanity has found the source of infinite energy, but is not yet free from the power of propaganda... These nine stories are accompanied by an introduction to the project and essays by the coordinating team. Max Haiven writes of the figure of the alien and workers' experiences of alienation. Sarah Olutola meditates with W.E.B. Dubois on the power of words to change the world. Graeme Webb reframes speculative writing as a form of play that opens the radical imagination. And Xenia Benivolski reflects on how, in both Communist and Capitalist societies, speculative fiction gives rise to subversive dreams. For more information about The World After Amazon, or the Worker as Futurist project of which it is a part, please visit http: //afteramazon.world