Thomas, re your question regarding my thoughts on alienated humans in network society: indeed, this is part of my next article speaking about the non-commitment in network society, where we realize that commitment is a mutual concept. If companies are laying off masses of employees to hire them back in as freelancers the answer of those individuals is non-commitment in return.
Hence we learn that commitment doesn’t arise from paying alone. Once we realize that we earn commitment only if we are willing to share it in taking over responsibility and committing ourselves too we will have arrived at a mature understanding of network society: everything is mutual (interestingly enough this seems to be valid for all fields of life).

Governments too will realize that $1 per hour like on Amazon Mechanical Turk and an exhausted population likely won’t make a country thrive and prosper once domestic demand will be driven close to extinction by a poverty stricken population (surprise!).

Network Economy will help everyone involved understand that prosperity comes from sharing – not just the resources but also the gains. I am curious to see whether society will decide to painfully repeat the stretched process of coming to randomly fair terms or whether we decide to learn from history that there’s no way out of establishing a more or less balanced system. So we could do this in a civilized and mature manner instead of falling back into repeating feudal struggles. Neither side can win such a battle. Balance is the only possible outcome. This we can achieve by blood and tears or by behaving in a way that is worthy of a society of the 21st century.

especially Your statement: “In fact it’s less about humans against robots: the question is more about how humans treat humans.”
My perspective to this is: “It’s all a matter of consciousness.”
or more clearly: “Our consciousness matters!” And this is to be taken literally.
I’m really looking forward for Your Part 2 and 3 (on the private and the other on the public sector parts).
For now I am offering work for social workers and educators at more than fair conditions. Hence there are only few well-trained professionals with formal qualifications available on the market they realize their value: Sending their application and CV by e-mail, some even come live to the interview, some prefer Skype. They have a lot of demands which we are willing to fullfill, the binding nature of their commitments seems to lack of liabiliy though. Three out of four cancel the first on-site appointment about one and a half hours before via SMS: “Sorry, just got another offer with even better conditions.” (All “little Amazons” around?)
So maybe it’s not “about humans against robots”, but – still – more about alienation of humans and a loss of feeling for themselves in the community? Alienated humans just acting and to be used like robots? Should there be part of us, having already internalized this mindset not needing any more chip implants?
Not really 🙂 So I’d suggest, it seems to be a multilevel process we’d be better off meditating on once in a while, then step out in the garden, find and hug each other and share good moments in real life 🙂
Tell me Your thoughts.