Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Technologies of Consumer Labor: A History of Self-Service

Technologies of Consumer Labor: A History of Self-Service

Palm, Michael

Hardcover

Series: Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies

Technology & EngineeringGeneral SociologyGeneral World History

ISBN10: 1138186473
ISBN13: 9781138186477
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Nov 10 2016
Pages: 186
Weight: 0.85
Height: 0.60 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

This book documents and examines the history of technology used by consumers to serve oneself. The telephone's development as a self-service technology functions as the narrative spine, beginning with the advent of rotary dialing eliminating most operator services and transforming every local connection into an instance of self-service. Today, nearly a century later, consumers manipulate 0-9 keypads on a plethora of digital machines. Throughout the book Palm employs a combination of historical, political-economic and cultural analysis to describe how the telephone keypad was absorbed into business models across media, retail and financial industries, as the interface on everyday machines including the ATM, cell phone and debit card reader. He argues that the naturalization of self-service telephony shaped consumers' attitudes and expectations about digital technology.

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