Automated infrastructure: COVID-19 and the shifting geographies of supply chain capitalism

Abstract

In recent years, geographers have evinced how infrastructure constitutes the bedrock of supply chain capitalism and its oppressions. This article interrogates how advanced automation – comprising robotics, artificial intelligence and software – is poised to politicize this infrastructural space further on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflecting on COVID-19 developments, the article shows how logistics is turning to advanced automation to drive productivity outside labour, spur self-service consumption through digital technologies and contest labour’s future. As automated infrastructure threatens to take hold, a configuration of exchange that increasingly places labour, but not profits, outside of capital’s circulations will need to be challenged

Humans, robots and artificial intelligences reconfiguring urban life in a crisis

“…First, we apply a lens informed by literature on urban resilience and the governance of crisis. Although this article does not aspire to make a contribution to the field, the use of such a lens in needed because the role of robots in response to disaster has become a matter of concern as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic (Chen et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2021;Lin, 2022). Other urban crises may be expected and robots can be expected to play ever-increasing roles in crisis responses (Yigitcanlar et al, 2021).…”

Distribution, dis-sumption and dis-appointment: The negative geographies of city logistics

“…However, entanglements between distribution and consumption remain underexamined. As Lin (2021: 473) argues, referring to Ritzer and Jurgenson’s (2010: 18) work on ‘prosumption’, within increasingly automated models of retail logistics' consumers are enrolled both as data profiles to be mined – the ‘unpaid labour’ of the prosumer – and, via forms of self-service, as ‘willing logistical workers’, that is, dis-sumers . To take a basic example, while the innovations of the logistics revolution ‘made it possible to move freight though multiple modes of transport without needing to unpack and repack it at each transfer point’ (Danyluk, 2019: 100), these goods must be unpacked somewhere , with the more irregular, awkward tasks of handling and movement delegated to warehouse pickers/packers, delivery drivers, but also to consumers themselves.…”

“…Given the dispersed quality of the ‘urban milieus’ across which dis-sumptive work is done (Lin, 2021), there is a need to further elucidate the everyday geographies which (re)produce logistical economies. This requires that we advance certain trajectories of existing critical thought: in particular, perspectives which disassociate the extraction of value from the valorisation of speed, putting onus not only on coordination and flexibility (Budd and Ison, 2015), but also friction and slowness (Banoub and Martin, 2020; Haugen, 2019; Rose et al, 2017).…”

“…Particularly in the wake of COVID-19, logistics industry rhetoric posits the doorstep as an ideal space of hygienic, seamless exchange. As Lin (2021) observes of the discourse of automation, doorstep drop-offs evacuate interpersonal interaction, replacing it with the ‘contactless’ delivery. In theory, distanced exchange frees the consumer from both the risk of viral exposure and the burden of social niceties – in Wylie’s (2021: 204) terms, this is the privilege of spaciousness – whilst increasing the speed of delivery rounds by minimising waiting time at the customer’s door.…”

The Role Of Technology In Era 5.0 In The Development Of Arabic Language In The World Of Education

“…Society 5.0 is a concept proposed by Japan on January 21, 2019 (Narvaez Rojas et al, 2021). In fact, Society 5.0 is the antithesis of Industrial Revolution 4.0 which eliminates the role of humans through automation, digitalization and capitalism in global industrialization projects (Lin, 2021). The era of society 5.0 serves to help various human needs to achieve a better life.…”