The question here is to what extent installnig self-service checkouts tills in mass retail outlets allows a company to ask its customers to work on its behalf, thereby realising new forms of surplus value. The article uses this issue as a way of broaching the general topic of «progress», demonstrating how the concept has become a vehicle for representing technological innovations of this nature as something universal, positive and inevitable - whereas in reality they mainly serve senior management interests while undermining service quality and checkout staff members’ working conditions.... [Leer más...]