ZOE HORN
Thesis Title
Machine Architectures: Formats and the Geopolitics of Automated Environments
Research Description
The project aims to understand how automation’s transformation of labour and life is rendered through automated retail formats that drive competition in global commerce. The project describes and maps the movements of one format –Just Walk Out (JWO) – across global space, in order to understand how its automated environments configure a technical form of geopolitics. It asks how JWO and other formats, linked to Amazon and Alibaba in the US, UK and China, operate and circulate globally, to enhance knowledge and understanding of contemporary governance of labour and territory and reveal wider ideological and institutional values of business and politics shaping the experience of people who work and engage with automated technologies, now and in the future.
Supervisors
Prof Brett Neilson, Western Sydney University
Prof Ned Rossiter, Western Sydney University