It has never been easier to find little jobs for little payments. If you are being paid through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to tag people’s photos or being hired to put up shelves via TaskRabbit, who needs a real job? For enthusiasts, these micro-jobs mean sticking two fingers up to the Man and rejecting wage-slavery in favour of freedom. For pessimists, they are precarious ways to earn a living that offer no pension or health insurance. Welcome to the “gig economy”, a phrase that evokes both the romantic ideals and the grinding poverty of life as a journeyman musician.
找到掙小錢的零工從未如此簡單過。如果你通過亞馬遜(Amazon)的土耳其機器人(Mechanical Turk)受雇，為別人標記相片，或者通過TaskRabbit受雇搭個架子，誰還需要真正的工作？對熱心者來說，這些零工意味著可以向老板說不，選擇自由，不做工資的奴隸。對悲觀者來說，這些是不穩定的謀生方式，沒有任何養老或者醫療保險。歡迎來到“零工經濟”(gig economy)，這個術語讓人想起零工音樂家的浪漫理想和貧困潦倒。