The Return of the Servant

Domestic staff? Servants? Not us. OK, there is the Polish cleaning lady. And in the evening, we order in a quick meal from a delivery service. How else would we manage everything in our social and working lives? There’s no time even to go shopping. And what a relief that the deliveryman carries our groceries upstairs!

It is only half true to say that computers run our everyday lives. Because our household, childcare or nursing needs are increasingly served by a workforce that is found most easily on the Internet. Christoph Bartmann describes how a new underclass of badly paid helpers and deliverers has sprung up alongside the digital world. The middle classes are increasingly acquiring a taste for a neo-feudal lifestyle. A sharp look at our society which evidently gets along fine with social segregation.