“Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance” Receives ASIS&T 2023 Best Information Science Book of the Year Award
The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that “Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance,” written by Karen Levy and published by Princeton University Press is the recipient of the ASIS&T Best Information Science Book Award for 2023. The award’s purpose is to recognize the outstanding book in information science published during the preceding calendar year. The award is given to the author(s) whose book is judged to have made the most outstanding contribution in the field of information science during the year.
In “Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance” Levy gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how digital surveillance is affecting the trucking way of life “Data Driven” examines how digital surveillance is upending life and work on the open road, and raises crucial questions about the role of data collection in broader systems of social control.
Federal regulations now require truckers to buy and install digital monitors that capture data about their locations and behaviors. Intended to address the pervasive problem of trucker fatigue by regulating the number of hours driven each day, these devices support additional surveillance by trucking firms and other companies. Levy reveals how these invasive technologies are reconfiguring industry relationships and providing new tools for managerial and legal control―and how truckers are challenging and resisting them.
“Data Driven” contributes to an emerging conversation about how technology affects our work, institutions, and personal lives, and helps to guide our thinking about how to protect public interests and safeguard human dignity in the digital age.
Karen Levy is an associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University and associated faculty at Cornell Law School. She researches the legal, social, and ethical dimensions of data-intensive technologies, particularly in contexts marked by conditions of inequality. Much of Levy's research considers the social impacts of surveillance and automation on labor and the workplace. Levy is a New America National Fellow and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She holds a J.D. from Indiana University Maurer School of Law and a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University.
Upon learning of her book’s selection as the ASIS&T 2023 Best Information Science Book of the Year, Levy said, “I'm truly honored to receive the ASIS&T Best Information Science Book Award! Information science is such a supportive and intellectually generative field, and I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity to learn from and work among this community. The impacts of surveillance and automation technologies on low-wage workers are critically important policy issues, and it means a great deal to me to have this research so generously recognized by ASIS&T.”
Levy will receive the award at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) which will be held 27-31 October 2023 in London, UK.