Here is the abstract for my paper at the 2012 Cultural Studies Association of Australia conference. I presented it on December 5, 2012.
Mining automation, displaced labour and materialities of communication
Chris Chesher
Digital Cultures, University of Sydney
Information systems, remote operation and robotics are currently being introduced into mines around the world. As miners reconfigure communication, control and labour, mining practices that have barely changed in a century are being transformed. This paper analyses innovations such as remote operation of mining, and autonomous systems as media changes, as well as changes in labour processes. The paper follows in reverse the historical arc of Harold Innis, who began in geographical economics (cod, fur, railways in Canada) before pioneering a materialist, longue durée historical media theory.
Mining is among the most basic material human practices. The blasting, loading, hauling, processing and shipping of iron ore is a rudimentary process performed on a huge scale. Digital systems don’t immediately change these material practices, but introduce new information and control flows. The autonomous Komatsu trucks now hauling ore in the Pilbara are little different physically from the human-driven fleet, but afford a precision, continuity, and smoothness of operation that human drivers could not tolerate. Digital media are valued in mining for their greater ‘efficiencies’, and their centralising and visualisation of monitoring and control of mine sites, which can be thousands of kilometres apart. These changes in machine/material communications and autonomy have implications for the kinds of work, the kinds of workers, and the kinds of communities that can cooperate with the mines, and many other workplaces, of the future.
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