Tracking the global Internet giants for more than a decade, perspective the real United States under the shadow of technology

In just over two decades, Amazon has risen to become the world's largest Internet company and the second largest private employer in the United States, with its "fulfillment centers" for warehousing and transportation spreading around the world and reshaping the way people live.

In a decade-long investigation, veteran US journalist Alec McGillis has witnessed how the company, once a symbol of technological progress, has grown into a capital monster that has defied the state. It brings the convenience of "one-click order", but also causes a series of chain reactions: the real economy continues to decline, and traditional communities have been withered; Squeezed by monopolies, small and medium-sized retailers are struggling; Workers are trapped in a high-pressure efficiency system and lose their dignity as workers.

Using Amazon as a lens, Alec McGillis captures people in the shadow of a tech oligarchy, showing an America divided geographically and classically by capital. Through a panoramic view, the book also shows that the upstream and downstream of the e-commerce industry, from industrial workers to ordinary buyers, are all caught in the slave trap of surveillance capitalism

We live in a time when we have everything, but we are trapped in a life of nothing; We get 30-minute takeout at the click of a button, next-day delivery of digital products, the convenience of seven-day returns for no reason, but lose the dignity of labor, the freedom of choice, the right to public participation, and the connections and human feelings that once existed in the neighborhood.

Hector Torres was asked by his wife to move into the basement. There's nothing wrong with him, let alone cheating in his marriage. He just didn't have the right job.

Ironically, if his wife hadn't pushed him, Hector wouldn't have taken the job. Hector was unemployed for 11 years when he lost his $170,000-a-year tech job during the Great Recession. More than 50 years old, was always favored young and energetic industry abandoned, people in the trough, Hector depressed, depressed. The family lives off the income his wife Laura earns from selling training courses on medical diagnostic equipment. In 2006, unable to afford a $5,500 monthly mortgage, Hector and his family fled the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to a larger house in suburban Denver, Colorado.

Then Laura gave her long-unemployed husband an ultimatum: If he couldn't find a job, he had to leave. So he returned to California to join his family. Hector comes from an immigrant family and came to California from Central America decades ago. His sister, who lives in the outer suburbs of San Francisco, took him in. If he plans to go out, he must be back before 8:30 p.m., otherwise he will disturb his brother-in-law's rest. The brother-in-law wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and drives to Silicon Valley before dawn, spending more than three hours a day commuting like 120,000 other Bay Area workers.

After five months of this, Laura found a way for her husband to return home, but he had to find a job. Hector did eventually find a job, but that was in June 2019, six months later. Once, he drove past a warehouse, saw a job Posting, stopped and asked, and they told him to report for work the next day.

Hector works four all-nighters a week, usually from 7:15 p.m. the night before to 7:15 a.m. the next. His rush around the warehouse -- loading out trailers, unloading them on pallets, sorting envelopes and packages -- meant that he spent the night standing at conveyor belts (there were no chairs in the warehouse), moving hundreds of items an hour from one belt to another, carefully positioned so that the side with the bar code faced up for scanning machines.

There was a huge pile of boxes waiting to be moved, some weighing as much as 50 pounds - weight was secondary, and the real problem was that until the boxes were lifted, it was impossible to tell whether they were light or heavy by their size alone. This unpredictable situation is a constant challenge for the body and mind. For a while, Hector wore a waist guard, but it was too hot to wear, like being roasted on a fire. He also developed tendinitis in his elbow. Each shift, he often walked more than 12 miles - according to the smart bracelet - he thought the bracelet must be broken, bought a new pedometer and wore it, and the reading was the same. Apply topical pain relief cream before work, take ibuprofen at work, stand on an ice pack when you get home, put a cold compress on your elbow, and soak your feet with Epsom salt. Shoes should be changed frequently to disperse the stress on the sole. Hector makes $15.60 an hour, a fifth of what he made when he was in the tech industry, and far better than being unemployed.

The warehouse, located in Thornton, 16 miles north of Denver, only opened in 2018. Clint Autry, the warehouse's general manager, has been with the company for seven years and has helped open many other facilities across the country. He has even been involved in testing radio-wave vests, "drive unit" robots in warehouses that move large loads and keep fully automated "colleagues" alert when workers have to step into their path. "Our key mission is to get products to customers in the fastest and most logistically cost-effective way," the general manager said during a presentation at a large open house at the Thornton Warehouse.