Automated Delivery: Amazon’s Urban Stack
The city today is filled to the brim with logistics and platform companies vying for the chance to deliver goods to us. For example, the rise of dark retail and…
Publications
We build this city on rocks and (feminist) code: hacking corporate computational designs of cities to come
Maja-Lee Voigt (2023) We build this city on rocks and (feminist) code: hacking corporate computational designs of cities to come, Digital Creativity, 34:2, 162-177, DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2023.2205406.
Automatisiertes Verhalten: Regierungskünste Bei Amazon
As early as 2015, an article in the New York Times triggered a major discussion about Amazon’s competitive corporate culture, strongly influenced by company founder Jeff Bezos, and the rough…
Three Shades of “Urban-Digital Citizenship”: Borders, Speculation, and Logistics in Cape Town
Drawing upon case studies from Cape Town, ‘Africa’s smartest city’, this article proposes three theses on ‘urban-digital citizenship’.
Processed Food on the Urban Data Highway. Food Delivery Services as In_Visible Infrastructures in the Production of Urbanity
The increasing platformization of urban life needs critical perspectives to examine changing everyday practices and power shifts brought about by the expansion of digital platforms mediating care-services, housing, and mobility.…
The Invisualities of Capture in Amazon’s Logistical Operations
This paper explores the status of visuality in surveillance capitalism by considering its role in the management of Amazon’s logistical operations. Whereas Amazon is often portrayed as being at the…
CTRL + F_eminist futures_. Hacking algorithmic architectures of cities to come
In this episode of “Hacker Culture”, project member Maja-Lee Voigt introduces her former research on hackfeminist collectives, discussing how important especially FLINTA-hackspaces are in the production of urban spaces in an increasingly digitalized city.
Smart Cities, Smart Borders. Sensing Networks and Security in the Urban Space
Sensing infrastructures are increasingly disseminating and performing across the urban space techniques that are specific to borders, and especially to ‘smart’ borders, such as algorithmic profiling, biometrics recognition, scanning and…
Kybernetischer Kapitalismus? Amazon, Algorithmisches Management und Aneignung
Supposedly, capitalism manages without planning because the “invisible hand” of the market mediates between our self-interests, between supply and demand, without this having to be planned or prejudged in advance.…
Remote Control: Algorithmic Management of Circulation at Amazon
This chapter examines how logistical media organize circulation at the online retailer Amazon. The chapter takes a look at the warehouse and the interaction of algorithmic management with architectural infrastructures…
Der Digitalität ausgeliefert!? – Essenslieferdienste zwischen verkörperten Codes, Un_Sichtbarkeit und städtischer (Re-)Produktion
Zwischen knallig-künstlicher, fast aufdringlicher Sichtbarkeit und algorithmisch-abstrakter Unsichtbarkeit schwebend hat sich eine weitere Infrastruktur in unseren urbanen Alltag geschlichen: die der Informations- und Daten’lieferdienste‘. Konstruiert aus Codes, eingeschrieben in Apparchitekturen…
Infrastructures of Extraction in the Smart City: Zones, Finance, and Platforms in New Town Kolkata
International Journal of Communication. 15(2021): 2652–2668.This article explores the infrastructures of value extraction that emerge as the township of New Town Kolkata is being transformed into a “smart” city. As the processes of digitalization take…