Encountering automation: Redefining bodies through stories of technological change

Abstract

This article enhances our understanding of the thoroughly embodied nature of knowledge production in relation to automation by demonstrating how making sense of automation is a generative process, rather than the demystification of an already existing object of analysis. It argues that the process of knowing automation involves situated encounters that transform bodies at the level of their indeterminate capacities to affect and be affected which, in turn, contributes to the production of what automation is. Contrasting with more generalised diagnoses about how automation is deskilling or reskilling bodies, it evaluates the constitutive role of situated encounters that register in sensing bodies for reshaping capacities. Focusing on iron ore mining in Australia, an industry sector that is currently increasing its automated operations, the paper draws on a series of fieldwork encounters with people differently positioned in the mining sector. Through the presentation of five stories that incorporate combinations of these fieldwork encounters, the paper constructs a more complex picture of how automation is redefining different bodies. Rather than taken to be mere representations of automation, it argues that the listening to and telling of stories about automation is a form of encounter that redefines bodies in the process.

Automating Agroecology: How to Design a Farming Robot Without a Monocultural Mindset?

“…When the Lochem farmer walked behind the weeding robot picking out weeds it had missed, he demonstrated a human—robot collaboration, what could be viewed as a ‘co-bot’ scenario, that goes beyond the “supervised control” described by van Mourik et al ( 2021 ). This type of collaboration has given rise to a number of debates regarding the role of technologies as replacers or collaborators for humans (Ryan et al, 2021 ), and philosophical questions of who is adapting to or assisting who (Bissell, 2021 ). Smith and Fressoli ( 2021 ) provide a useful conceptual framework for thinking about “post-automation,” where encouraging a plurality of engagements with technology could provide an alternative to an essentialized future for automation.…”

Atmospheric conditioning: Airport automation, labour and the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…This paper extends existing debates on human-machine relations (Bissell, 2018(Bissell, , 2021Kinsley, 2018) by thinking through how the adoption of automation is closely tied to the atmospheres surrounding it. Caught in the whirlwinds of COVID-19, the study takes occasion of the pandemic -itself a catalyst for a frenzied clamour for technological answers -and considers how such atmospheres had played a hand in conditioning and guiding automationʼs shifting trajectories in Singaporeʼs Changi airport in 2020.…”

“…Specifically, the crisis has highlighted, if in an extreme way, how quickly atmospheres -sometimes proving deflationary, sometimes unstably flickering, and sometimes becoming buoyant againcould change the way airport workers saw and approached automation from one time-period to the next. While discourse and encounter remain important in determining what automation is (Bissell, 2021;Ruckenstein & Turunen, 2020), these atmospheres can have an equally profound effect on technologyʼs (dis)use.…”

Filtering Touch: An Ethnography of Dirt, Danger, and Industrial Robots

“…While acknowledging the methodological and empirical challenges of this filtration process (e.g., balancing and foreground touch while locating it within sociosensorial context), we contend that refining a focus from the body to a concern with how touch works provides an avenue to grapple with the complexities of technological mediation. As demonstrated in this article filtering touch does not separate tactility from other senses nor from the industrious and social body ( Shilling 2005 ) rather it redirects attention to how touch works, adding another dimension to the felt realities of automation ( Bissell 2020 ). Our analytical process made accessible the technological mediation of touch in settings geared toward hyperproduction at scale, giving voice to important power inequalities that are fused to dirty and dangerous touch.…”