Spurred by advances in digital technology, an on-demand workforce has been growing steadily for well over a decade, creating a new “gig” economy. This is an economy in which more and more people either choose to, or are forced to, earn their livelihood working on lots of small “gigs” rather than being employed full- or part-time.
While the gig economy can offer greater flexibility and economic efficiencies, it also spells the rise of an anxious, disenfranchised workforce glued to their smartphones or laptops, waiting for the next gig to materialise.
First there were service marketplaces such as Elance, oDesk (now Upwork), Freelancer, and 99Designs- through which computer professionals and designers competed for one-off or short-term assignments. Then came the current wave of digital platforms such as Uber, airbnb, and Australian start-up, Whizz, which offers on-demand cleaning services.
Human Intelligence for Sale
An even bigger global on-demand workforce has been nurtured by crowd-based platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk AMT and CrowdFlower on which millions of workers perform what are known in the trade as micro-tasks.
