“Drawing on the intellectual and political legacy of Italian operaismo, Notes Toward a Digital Workers’ Inquiry offers an exemplary demonstration of how inquiry can function simultaneously as a mode of collective action and a form of critical theory. Combining theoretical rigor with political depth, it renews the tradition of workers’ inquiry by anchoring research in collaboration, situated knowledge, and processes of mutual learning. The interviews gathered in this volume trace a compelling cartography of workers’ struggles along the global digital value chain, amplifying diverse voices from within contemporary labor movements. This important book makes a significant contribution to current debates on labor, technology, and knowledge production, providing essential insights for scholars and practitioners alike.” —Leopoldina Fortunati, author of The Arcana of Reproduction

“An invaluable collaboration between academic and digital workers certain to propel the struggle forward.” —Robert Ovetz, editor, Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle

“At a time when Big Tech's domination of our lives in and outside of work is growing, Notes Toward a Digital Workers' Inquiry centers the voices of workers and researchers who are building alliances and fighting back. In the tradition of 'workers' inquiry', the book shows that successful organizing across the digital supply chain will depend on workers' own knowledge about the labor process, as well as their creativity and capacity to act. Chock-full of interesting insights and analysis by workers and organizers, the book is sure to inspire engaged scholars and activists alike.” —Adam D.K. King, Labour Studies Program, University of Manitoba and author of "Class Struggle", a weekly newsletter about work and the labour movement in The Maple

“This essential book articulates and embodies ethical knowledge production amidst the rising tide of tech authoritarianism. It centers tech worker struggle and revives workers’ inquiry as the site of knowledge production and resistance. It is an inspiring and critical corrective to the proliferation of apolitical research on Big Tech.” —Veena Dubal, Professor of Law, UC Irvine | General Counsel, American Association of University Professors

“Workers' inquiry is back. It never really went away, but since its digital iteration, it has become an essential resource for understanding contemporary labor dynamics. Its evolution, from its nineteenth-century origins through its twentieth-century refinements within workerism to its remarkable revival in recent years, highlights how it has adapted to the changing nature of work. This vital and transformative book does more than just reviewing case studies. It demonstrates that understanding how we work together is the first step toward organizing together. Most investigations of digital workers' inquiry focus on a single occupation, such as app-based drivers, delivery couriers, data annotators, or tech workers. By bringing them together in this anthology, the Capacitor Collective reveals the bigger picture. The gig worker and the content moderator may perform different tasks, but they share the same struggle. Workers' inquiry bridges these divides, mapping connections across the fragmented digital labor ecosystem. The distinction between platform workers, tech employees, and logistics staff has been systematically reinforced to divide workers and hinder solidarity. It's high time these artificial boundaries collapsed. The inquiry becomes a human infrastructure for solidarity, organizing, and power.” —Antonio Casilli, author, Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation

“This brilliant text explains and exemplifies the practice of ‘Workers Inquiry’ as applied to Big Tech. It documents encounters between academic researchers and rebellious AI programmers, Amazon workers, rideshare drivers and other insurgent tech-sector employees, in conversations that are courageous, critical, self-reflexive, partisan, rich in radical analysis, full of unexpected angles—and that ultimately disclose an explosive counter-power at the very core of today’s digital capitalism.” —Nick Dyer-Witheford, co-author (with Alessandra Mularoni) of Cybernetic Circulation Complex

Offers a detailed analysis of contemporary digital labor, providing a direct look at platform capitalism... More than that, it argues something strik-ing: research and organizing form a single body, and only when workers investigate their own conditions is it possible to transform the power structures that govern them." —Jacqueline Lima Dourado, for Revista Revestrés