“Alex Rosenblat explores the increasingly unstable and unpredictable nature of work in America through an in-depth look at Uber’s questionable labor and technology practices. We had not fully witnessed the downside of management by algorithm until this book—a must-read for anyone interested in the topic.”
Chris Hughes, cofounder of Facebook, cochair of the Economic Security Project, and author of Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn
“Read Uberland to see how Rosenblat reverse engineers Uber to expose its machinations to become our gig overlord. There is no better analysis anywhere.”
Lawrence Mishel, Distinguished Fellow, Economic Policy Institute
“Ever wonder what life is like for an Uber driver and where rideshare fits into today’s economy? Rosenblat’s compelling narrative takes us deeper than any book before it, so you’re in for a treat. You won’t be able to put Uberland down.”
H. Luke Shaefer, coauthor of $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
“Rosenblat has succeeded in writing a clear, powerful book that goes far deeper than the headlines. By focusing on drivers, she reveals the complexities of their daily lives and challenges. She accounts for all the ways Uber both improves their lives and limits their prospects. This book is essential for anyone who hopes to understand platforms, applications, and the effects they have on real people.”
Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) and Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy
“Deft, multifaceted, and eminently accessible and readable.”
Michael Palm, author of Technologies of Consumer Labor: A History of Self-Service
“This is a great ethnography that reflects an extraordinary ability to synthesize qualitative research, news reports, legal documents, and other materials into a fast-paced, highly readable narrative about one of the most important firms in the platform economy.”
Frank Pasquale, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland, Affiliate Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project, member of the Council for Big Data, Ethics, and Society
“… a profoundly important book.”
<a href="http://fortune.com/2018/10/16/data-sheet-fortune-global-forum-china-drug-price-nobel/" target="_blank">Adam Lashinsky</a>, Fortune
“This book is an essential read for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and all who have a vested interest in understanding how technology is reconfiguring society.”
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Uberland-Algorithms-Rewriting-Rules-Work/product-reviews/0520298578/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_top?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews" target="_blank">danah boyd</a>, Data & Society
“If you’re interested, as I am, in what technology is doing to our lives, it’s must reading.”
<a href="https://www.boswellbooks.com/book/9780520298576" target="_blank">Daniel Goldin</a>, Boswell Books
“A fine work of technology ethnography.”
<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/reading-uberland-and-thinking-about-contingent-faculty" target="_blank">Joshua Kim</a>, Inside Higher Ed
“Rosenblat’s Uberland is a timely, accessible analysis of a Silicon Valley innovator that disrupted an industry. Over the years I’ve often wondered, is Uber good or bad? That is not the question Alex Rosenblat sets out to answer in her well-researched new book…”
<a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2018/book-review-uberland-timely-accessible-analysis-silicon-valley-innovator/" target="_blank">Greg Shaw</a>, GeekWire
“A timely look at the tensions between technology and the future of employment, and how ambitious startups might be changing the way we see and value work.”
<a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/uber-book-interview-alex-rosenblat-algorithms-rewriting-rules-work/" target="_blank">Tonya Riley</a>, Mother Jones
“Rosenblat offers a valuable history of the ideological work that went into the “gentrification” of the profession... [She] maintains a sometimes-unnerving cool while narrating tales of outrageous exploitation...”
Adrien Chan, Reviewer, New York Magazine
“Her analysis is balanced and measured... Rosenblat’s book urges us to wipe the techno-enthusiasm from our eyes.”
<a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/feasting-on-precarity/" target="_blank">Robin Kaiser-Schätzlein</a>, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Uber a tiré un maximum de valeur des conducteurs en surfant sur les limites et ambiguïtés des normes culturelles et juridiques.”
<a href="http://internetactu.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/12/20/uberland-luberisation-est-elle-encore-lavenir-du-travail/" target="_blank">Hubert Guillaud</a>, InternetActu & LeMonde
“Uber, c’est de la sous-traitance poussée à l'extrême, enrobée dans un discours technologique...”
<a href="https://usbeketrica.com/article/uber-c-est-une-forme-radicale-de-capitalisme-de-surveillance" target="_blank">Fabien Benoit</a>, Usbek & Rica
“Uberland provides an ethnographic observation that refutes many of the assumptions on which the “platform economy” has thrived.”
<a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/11768/2619 " target="_blank">Julian Posada</a>, International Journal of Communication
“Quite simply: this book is a masterpiece. Rosenblat synthesizes stories of drivers, with detailed research and a clear headed understanding of the emerging gig economy, into a page turner that has all the elements of a best selling spy thriller.”
<a href="https://therideshareguy.com/uberland-review/" target="_blank">John Ince</a>, The Rideshare Guy
“… revelatory… this jargon-free and intriguing exposé offers food for thought for anyone interested in worker protections or societal changes driven by technology.”
Publishers Weekly, leading American trade news magazine for publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents
“I love her book and it's really great.”
Tim, 10 year old reader of <em>Uberland</em>
“The main innovation of today’s gig economy may be its effective repackaging of historically low-status, poorly remunerated blue- and pink-collar work as what Alex Rosenblat’s Uberland terms “fashionable glamor labor.” Sharing platforms, as Rosenblat [shows], have enacted nothing less than a transformation of human capital into human raw material. The future gig economy that trailblazers imagine is defined not by limitless possibility, but... by a straitened market calculus.”
<a href="https://www.publicbooks.org/gig-authoritarians/" target="_blank">Maya Vinokour</a>, Public Books
“The gig economy is here to stay. Uberland is a timely book as technology increasingly intensifies in our daily lives. It reads like book-length investigative journalism, refreshingly jargon-free. It stays truthful to the stories that drivers tell and is readable and engaging. It is suitable for undergraduate classes in sociology of work; science, technology, and society; and consumption.”
<a href="https://twitter.com/NgaThanNYC" target="_blank">Nga Than</a>, Sociologist