Humanly Extended Automation or the Future of Work Seen through Amazon Patents

Bibliographic Data

ID5337882
AuthorsAlessandro Delfanti (0000-0001-7148-6675, University of Toronto Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, corresponding author), Bronwyn Frey (0000-0002-6391-3574, University of Toronto Mississauga, Ontario, Canada)
Year2021
Volume46
Issue3
Pages655-682
Publication date2021-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243920943665
OpenAlexW3045566682
LanguageEN
Citations received35
References cited34

Amazon's projects for future automation contribute to anxieties about the marginalization of living labor in warehousing. Yet, a systematic analysis of patents owned by Amazon suggests that workers are not about to disappear from the warehouse floor. Many patents portray machines that increase worker surveillance and work rhythms. Others aim at incorporating workers' activities into machinery to rationalize the labor process in an ever more pervasive form of digital Taylorism. Patents materialize the company's desire for a technological future in which workers act and sense on behalf of machinery, becoming its living and sensing appendages. In this new relationship, humans extend machinery and its reach. Through the work-in-progress process of reaching increasing levels of automation, Amazon develops new technical foundations that consolidate its power in the digital workplace

Amazon rainforest · Automation · Business · Sociology · Work in process · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Employment and Welfare Studies · Engineering · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Ecology · Marketing

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