Humanly Extended Automation or the Future of Work Seen through Amazon Patents
Humanly Extended Automation or the Future of Work Seen through Amazon Patents
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DOI：
10.1177/0162243920943665
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发表时间：
2020-07-29
影响因子：
3.1
通讯作者：
Frey, Bronwyn
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Delfanti, Alessandro;Frey, Bronwyn
亚马逊的未来自动化项目引发了人们对仓储行业活劳动力边缘化的担忧。然而，对亚马逊拥有的专利进行的系统分析表明，工人不会从仓库里消失。许多专利描述了增加工人监督和工作节奏的机器。另一些则旨在将工人的活动整合到机器中，以一种越来越普遍的数字泰勒主义形式使劳动过程合理化。专利实现了公司对技术未来的渴望，在未来，工人代表机器行动和感知，成为其有生命和感知的附属物。在这种新的关系中，人类扩展了机器及其范围。在不断提高自动化水平的过程中，亚马逊开发了新的技术基础，巩固了其在数字化工作场所的实力。
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.