ABSTRACT
This chapter brings to light occluded labor in Google Books by reconstructing a narrative of the Scan-Ops: a group of yellow badge workers responsible for digitizing millions of texts. This group exists in relative secrecy and is excluded from the privileges afforded to most Google workers. The Scan-Ops play a monumental role in the public internet, but they remain fixed as low-status workers. Remarkably, we are occasionally afforded a fleeting glimpse of the Scan-Ops by the imprints left behind in the scanned pages of books: a gloved fingertip, a severed hand. Zeffiro reads these fragments as an ephemeral glitch archive to locate the supporting acts and integrated circuits of labor that are material, despite being sequestered virtually. By reading Google Books infrastructurally, Zeffiro links this archive to a theory of media infrastructure by accounting for not only what appears on screen but also for the supporting acts that render screen content visible. These ephemeral gestures summon the invisible work marginalized groups have performed throughout the history of computing. Ultimately, reading the human fragments in these scanned pages allows us to not only discern such invisible labors but also demarcate the contradictions between those who operate the system and those to whom it belongs.
