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Accepted Paper:
Standardised network time as contested infrastructure
Tsvetelina Hristova
(Southampton University)
Automation in logistics and cloud computing leads to a proliferation of time protocols and standards, which spawn new labour subjectivities in the warehouse, defined through their relation to industrial temporality.
Paper Abstract:
The problem of temporality is a key logistical conundrum for automation. Concerned with the transfer of packets of data, network protocols and new standards for AI and IoT produce a multitude of concepts and practices of time, such as hard and soft real time, time-sensitive networking, Amazon Time Sync Service and Amazon CloudWatch that straddle the contradiction between universality and infrastructural enclosures. The paper explores the contradictory production of time on the network and the fractured and uneven temporalities that emerge on the shop floor as a result of these drives for standardisation. Rather than a homogenised rapid pace, the logic of temporal control fragments the pace of work and relies on the emergence of labour subjects who exist outside of the push for fast productivity.