<div dir="ltr"><p style="margin:0px 0px 6px;font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(35,35,35)">As I will be away from email for the next few days, let me respond to this quickly. </p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 6px;font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(35,35,35)">Thanks for pointing to the Fissured Workplace, Frank, that's a really excellent book and a great read for everyone who is curious about the switch to contingent work. And of course, the wage fixing that Google and Facebook engaged in, shows that even among the most privileged, employment is by no means a quixotic hideaway. But while we know that, this should not mean that we argue that the horse is out of the barn, that employment is a thing of the past, and that we should rush to embrace ad hoc work. </p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 6px;font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(35,35,35)"> I also think that the social vision that you point to in the end, that of replacing a large swath of employees with contingent laborers, is very much a shift that is under way. </p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 6px;font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(35,35,35)">This is also a dynamic that is at play when companies like TaskRabbit are restructuring what used to be known as the temp economy. Or think of oDesk, which now claims to have 8 million worker accounts. These are not just incumbents in the labor market, they are in fact shaping the nature of work. Erin Hatton has a lot to say about the Permanent Temp Economy.</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 6px;font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(18,85,204)"><span style="text-decoration:underline"><a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/the-rise-of-the-permanent-temp-economy/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/the-rise-of-the-permanent-temp-economy/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0</a></span></p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 6px;font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(35,35,35)">And Ted, #DL14 will, in fact, address the situation of adjunct faculty and many other things that are dismally wrong within the Academy. </p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 6px;font-size:16px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(35,35,35)">But beyond such critique and the acknowledgement of our own position, we hope to inspire people to think, design, and shape new forms of association and solidarity, to take cues from #FloodWallStreet, and artists like Natalie Bookchin who links the proliferation of digital networks to the increasing spread of poverty (<a href="http://longstory.us/"><span style="color:rgb(18,85,204)">http://longstory.us</span></a>).</p></div>