Digital utility: Datafication, regulation, labor, and DiDi’s platformization of urban transport in China
数字公用事业：数据化、监管、劳动力与滴滴在中国城市交通中的平台化
Author: Julie Yujie Chen（陈玉洁）、Jack Linchuan Qiu（邱林川）
Source：《Chinese Journal of Communication》2019 Volume12 Issue3
Abstract: This article develops the critical concept of digital utility through studying the case of DiDi Chuxing and the platformization of transport services in urban China. By examining DiDi’s business model, its datafication strategies, its relations with the Chinese government, and its labor management systems, the article demonstrates how the platformization of transport is emblematic of a private company becoming a digital utility provider. With technological imagination and practical inconsistency, this process remediates service delivery while reworking infrastructures and redefining the access to public and private services. We argue that platform companies are able to become digital utility suppliers because of their capacity to straddle the public and the private sectors, their aspiration to become “ecosystem builders,” and their heavy reliance on the constant intensive labor of users, particularly drivers, to produce data. However, these factors also make instability a definitive feature of digital utility companies in their present condition. Morphing into the terrain of utilities is a common undertaking by DiDi and similar platform companies. To problematize the logics of digital utility, especially its labor intensive datafication processes and its complex relations with regulators, provides a conceptual anchor for further debates on the infrastructuralization of platforms and the platformization of society.
文摘：本文通过研究滴滴出行和中国城市交通服务的平台化案例，发展了“数字公用事业”这一批判性概念。通过考察滴滴的商业模式、数据化策略、与中国政府的关系及其劳动管理系统，本文展示了交通平台化是如何成为私营企业转变为数字公用事业提供商的典型例证。这一过程伴随着技术想象与实践中的矛盾，在重塑基础设施、重新定义公共与私人服务获取方式的同时，也重构了服务交付模式。我们认为，平台公司之所以能成为数字公用事业供应商，是因为它们具备跨越公共和私营部门的能力，拥有成为“生态系统构建者”的愿景，并且严重依赖用户（特别是司机）持续的密集劳动来生产数据。然而，这些因素也使得不稳定性成为当前数字公用事业公司的一个决定性特征。向公用事业领域转型是滴滴及类似平台公司的普遍举措。对数字公用事业的逻辑（尤其是其劳动密集型的数据化过程及其与监管者的复杂关系）进行问题化探讨，为进一步辩论平台的基础设施化和社会的平台化提供了概念锚点。
Keywords: digital utility; ride-hailing platforms; informal economy; digital labor; algorithms
编译：任艳林、刘鑫
