Craig Gent

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT CRAIG GENT

Writer, researcher, and author of \'Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work\', forthcoming in August 2024 with Verso Books.I am the North of England Editor and a Director at Novara Media. At NM I write about the way the organisation of life and work shifts for working-class people over time, and what it means for the political forms needed to bring about change.As a researcher I specialise in the application of digital technology to work, from algorithms and AI to screens and scan-guns. I am especially interested in the role of technology in rearranging power within the workplace and beyond, the nature of algorithmic power and authority at work, and the role of what I call \'management interfaces\' in governing complex, dynamic environments involving humans. This is the topic of \'Cyberboss\', which is my first book. Even though work is the primary way we interact with informational capitalism, and the governing principle of our lives, I often feel it gets overlooked within critiques of digital society. It\'s something I\'m trying to rectify.My research is necessarily interdisciplinary and seeks expansive engagement with my field in a way that, I hope, can actually generate change in the world. My research might be situated within labour studies in a broad sense, but I draw my real conceptual insights from media theory, software studies and other relevant disciplines to improve fundamental understandings of how technology reorganises social relations (and what we might want to do about it). My background is in philosophy and the humanities, which I think moves me to ask the deep questions. Meanwhile, methodological training in the social sciences (and a supervisor who literally wrote the book on \'inventive methods\') gave me a critical understanding of the relationship between observation, participation and conceptualisation.I\'m a member of the Code Committee of regulator Impress, where I have contributed to ethical guidelines for the use of AI in newsrooms. I\'m also proud to be a volunteer Operational First Aider for St John Ambulance. I am an experienced speaker, editor and higher education teacher, and I occasionally consult for mission-led organisations that are in the process of growing their operations.In the rest of my life I like lounging in my local multiplex, spending time with my dog, and being an insatiable student of things I don\'t fully understand, such as tai chi, chess, Cymraeg, y español. Yes I am a fan of Socrates. With a bit of Diogenes.