Always-on work email isolates workers by removing fellow-worker support

Evidence

Blogs and social media have allowed us to talk to ourselves (but not to reach out beyond the left bubbles); they have also generated pathological behaviours and forms of subjectivity which not only generate misery and anger — they waste time and energy, our most crucial resources. Email and handhelds, meanwhile, have produced new forms of isolation and loneliness: the fact that we can receive communications from work anywhere and anytime means we are exposed to work’s order-words when we are alone, without the possibility of support from fellow workers. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1882

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘order-words without support’ mechanism — being addressed by work while alone instead of among colleagues — is a sharp framing of remote/always-on work alienation worth an essay.
• XREF: connects to: Worker alienation cumulatively severed workers from championing client rights — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 597; Modern office design isolates workers while claiming to connect them; Networked flexible labor suppresses gossip because everyone dreams of founding a company — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 364

Broader Connections

• Worker alienation cumulatively severed workers from championing client rights #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 597
• Modern office design isolates workers while claiming to connect them #expands (0.78)
• Networked flexible labor suppresses gossip because everyone dreams of founding a company #expands (0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 364