How Uber and the gig economy changed the way we live and work

Gig work predates the internet. Besides traditional forms of self-employment, like plumbing, offers for ad-hoc services have long been found in the Yellow Pages and newspaper classified ads, and later Craigslist and Backpage which supplanted them. Low-cost broadband internet allowed for the proliferation of computer-based gig platforms like Mechanical Turk, Fiverr and Elance, which offered just about anyone some extra pocket change. But once smartphones took off, everywhere could be an office, and everything could be a gig — and thus the gig economy was born.