Writer · Researcher · Lecturer at UMass Amherst

Platform inequality and the future of work.

I study how digital platforms are reshaping work, social life, and economic opportunity — and who gets left behind in the process. My work pairs large-scale computational analysis with deep qualitative inquiry, across three books forthcoming with Johns Hopkins, NYU Press, and Bloomsbury.

01 / BOOKS

Three books on how power gets quietly rearranged.

Book 01
NYU Press · Forthcoming

Code and Consciousness

How Software Engineers Construct Reality Without Knowing It

A computational analysis of developer discussions reveals how engineers routinely build social and political choices into the world's infrastructure — while sincerely believing they are doing nothing of the kind. The book names this professional epistemic foreclosure and traces how the very properties of code harden human decisions into seemingly natural fact.

643,000
DEVELOPER DISCUSSIONS
GITHUB + STACK OVERFLOW
95%
FRAMED AS PURE
TECHNICAL NECESSITY
Book 02
Bloomsbury · Forthcoming

Flexibility Without Freedom

The Political Economy of Remote Work

Why have 50 million American remote workers — despite spatial autonomy and acute awareness of workplace grievance — produced almost no political organizing? Drawing on three converging data sources, the book argues that remote work delivers flexibility without producing freedom in the political sense.

2.3M
REDDIT DISCUSSIONS
OF REMOTE WORK
40
IN-DEPTH
INTERVIEWS
~0
DISCURSIVE ATTENTION
TO COLLECTIVE ACTION
Book 03
Johns Hopkins · Forthcoming

The Presence Dividend

AI, Human Formation, and the Future of the University

Universities face a design choice about AI — not between human teaching and machines, but between two ways of combining them. Drawing on the first wave of randomized controlled trials, a structural model for reallocating freed human hours to what only people can provide: mentorship, intellectual community, and the formation of judgment.

4
RCTS REVIEWED
HARVARD · STANFORD · DEEPMIND · WHARTON
2×
LEARNING GAINS WHEN
DESIGN IS RIGHT
02 / RESEARCH

A computational lens on platform inequality.

I use large-scale platform data and computational methods to examine the unequal terrain of the digital economy: how algorithmic ranking systems shape who gets seen and paid, how gig marketplaces produce new forms of labor disparity, how social media reorganizes connection and isolation, and how the platformization of work is changing what it means to have a career.

Full publication list on Google Scholar
03 / ABOUT

About.

Tyler Horan

Tyler Horan is a writer and researcher on platform inequality. His work examines how digital platforms — from gig marketplaces to social media to algorithmic labor systems — are reshaping work, social life, and economic opportunity, and who gets left behind in the transition.

He is the author of forthcoming books with Johns Hopkins University Press, NYU Press, and Bloomsbury. His peer-reviewed research has appeared in Information, Communication & Society, Social Sciences, Societies, and the Journal of Social Computing, among others.

Horan is a lecturer in Computational Social Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches social network analysis and data-driven storytelling. He holds a PhD in sociology from The New School. Through Digion, his New Jersey consultancy, he advises organizations on applied AI systems and computational research.

He serves on the Board of Directors of the Creative Capital Foundation, which funds working artists across disciplines, and works with ForHumanity and the Center for Humane Technology on AI accountability and governance. His current book with Johns Hopkins takes up the question directly facing university boards: how institutions should govern AI in teaching and academic programs.

GOVERNANCE & ADVISORY
  • Creative Capital Foundation
    Board of Directors
  • ForHumanity
    AI audit & accountability
  • Center for Humane Technology
    Affiliate
AVAILABLE FOR COMMENTARY ON
  • Platform labor
  • Gig economy
  • Algorithmic inequality
  • Remote work
  • Social media & isolation
  • AI in higher education
  • AI governance
  • The future of work

Press, speaking, inquiries.

EMAIL tjhoran@umass.edu
UNIVERSITY UMass Amherst · DACSS
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