[...] most automated jobs still require humans to work around the clock, often part-time or on a contract basis, fine-tuning and caring for automated processes when the machines get stuck or break down, as technical systems, like humans, are apt to do.

It's also true that the long march toward automation has historically created new needs and different types of human labor to fill those needs. In this respect, the new, software-managed work world shares features of the factory jobs that assembled cars by placing workers on a production line where and when they were needed most. It also resembles the so-called piecework that women and children did on farms in the 19th century, assembling matchstick boxes for pennies a pop. And it overlaps in obvious ways with the outsourcing of medical transcription and call center work to the Global South that boomed with the expansion of the internet in the late 1990s.