Building the Future? Software Workers’ Imaginaries of Technology

Abstract

This article investigates an actor’s perspective on digital capitalism. We study software workers’ orientations towards their work by focusing on the social use value they attribute to it. The concept of use value allows us to examine the contradictions software workers might experience in digital capitalism. Drawing on the literature on the control of software workers and the New Spirit of Digital Capitalism, we identify hindrances to the workers’ claims of a social use value and explore the imaginaries of technology which might form the basis for a critique or legitimation of digital capitalism. We find that software workers hold strong claims of a societal use value towards their work. While their ethos of good technology forms a strong foundation to critique hindrances they perceive in creating useful technology, imaginaries of technology as an autonomous force might delegitimise the workers’ claims.