Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex (Digital Barricades) - Tapa dura

Cyber-Proletariat tracks the eddies and flows of the perfect storm that is contemporary capitalism. This panoramic work reveals the relentless force of material destruction and brutal violence concealed by the sleek surfaces of digital culture. (Benjamin Noys, Professor of Critical Theory, University of Chichester, and author of Malign Velocities)

Cyber-Proletariat teases out the tensions between new communisation and autonomist Marxist theories to portray the struggles of workers along the entire global capitalist commodity chain. An epic story, it is two parts the unending battle against capitalist cyber-vampires, and one part the Wizard of Oz- like alliance of “all who care for one another and for the world. (Dorothy Kidd, Professor and Chair, Department of Media Studies, University of San Francisco)

Nick Dyer-Witheford follows up his now-classic Cyber-Marx with a synoptic view of the relationship between the poles of the contemporary global proletariat from the Turkish miners killed in a shaft collapse to the highly paid "hackers" in Silicon Valley. Cyber-proletariat is rich in empirical detail and has a wide theoretical horizon. You will find in these pages workers in Foxconn contemplating suicide cheek-by-jowl with the Gezi Park demonstrators protesting the enclosure of a public park to build a shopping mall. It is written with Dyer-Witherford's well-known eloquence and passion. Cyber-proletarians should thank him for writing it and get it. (George Caffentzis, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern Maine)

Coltan mines in the Congo; electronics factories in China; devastated neighbourhoods in Detroit. Cyber-Proletariat shows us the dark-side of the information revolution; an unsparing analysis of class power and computerisation.

Nick Dyer-Witheford reveals how technology facilitates growing polarisation between wealthy elites and precarious workers. He reveals the class domination behind everything from expanding online surveillance to intensifying robotisation. At the same time he looks at possibilities for information technology within radical movements; contemporary struggles are cast in the blue glow of the computer screen.

Cyber-Proletariat brings heterodox Marxist analysis to bear on modern technological developments. The result will be indispensable to social theorists and hacktivists alike and essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how Silicon Valley shapes the way we live today.