ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some of that literature, which for many scholars has tended to come from and be about regions in North America and Europe. It focuses on popular beliefs that shape industry and academic perspectives of digital work, and reviews three types of field sites that often guide critical inquiry into modern practices of working with and through digital technologies: corporate culture in Silicon Valley, online work distribution platforms, and virtual games. Many popular ideas about digital work tend to come from a persistent focus on ‘creatives’ – a specific subgroup of people involved in developing and promoting computing technologies. Richard Florida may be the most influential thinker among a bevy of public intellectuals who cultivate a reputation for envisioning a utopic future of work on the World Wide Web. Florida’s positive outlook on the role of creatives is just one canonical example of widespread sociotechnical imaginaries about digital technologies and the people who use them.
