The injuries of platform logistics. (May 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hill, David W
• Is Part Of: Media, culture, and society. Volume 42:Number 4(2020:May)
• Page Start: 521
• Page End: 536
• Publication Date: 2020-05
• Subjects: consumer society -- digital infrastructure -- lean logistics -- moral responsibility -- online retail -- platform capitalism; Mass media and culture -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Wireless communication systems -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 302.2305
• DOI: 10.1177/0163443719861840
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0163-4437

Abstract

In order to understand the social impact of digital platforms, we need to examine the ways in which they reconfigure space – not only through critique of that reconfiguring but also examination of the conditions within the spaces it forms. This article offers a typology of the injuries enacted by platform logistics, taking online retail as its focus and using Amazon as an exemplar. Cognitive Injury occurs when platforms act to conceal their operation from the awareness of users. Hidden Injury is enacted on the invisible labour that sustains platform functionality, a precarious workforce that labours under harsh conditions and within hostile spaces, somewhere below the cognisance of the user. Moral Injury speaks of the way that platform logistics, in concealing from awareness the conditions that sustain its operation, attacks the ability of users, or of a society at large, to act with responsibility. These injuries are shown to be at play in the processes that facilitate buying online and order fulfilment. It is argued that the speed of purchasing and delivery enacts an unconscious consumption, which dislocates users from the labour that delivers the goods, creating a kind of perceptual pollution that diminishes a sense of moral responsibility.