From Ford to Facebook: Time and Technologies of Work

In this chapter Fisher suggests how we might look at the transformations in productive technologies from Ford's assembly line to the rise of Facebook's offices and platforms as means of organizing and reorganizing the social time of work in manners conducive to capitalist accumulation. As capitalist regimes of accumulation change, the construction of time is transformed, and the techno-social constellation is reconfigured to regulate time. Time, then, can also be understood---after Marx---as a central locus of contradiction and struggle between capital and labour, over the regulation and structure of time, and by extension, over value and power in general. After outlining a general framework, the article draws on a class-action lawsuit filed by Facebook users against the internet giant, in order to trace both sides of the struggle over work time.