Logistical Media Theory
Discussion
Ned Rossiter:
"The history of materialist approaches to the study of communication is one obvious point of departure for a media theory of logistical systems of communication, coordination and control.37 A focus on the material properties special to transport and communications infrastructure can be analytically complemented with attention to how the algorithmic architectures of communication and transport infrastructure impact upon the experience and conditions of labor operating within those industries. Drawing on the work of medium theorists such as Innis, McLuhan and Ong, communication historian and cultural critic James Carey noted that the advent of telegraphy in the nineteenth century “freed communication from the constraints of geography.”38 This meant that concepts and practices of communication could be understood beyond the dominant “transmission view” of communication in which the mobility of people, goods and information involved equivalent operations (using railway networks, for example). For Carey, symbolic and ritualistic views of communication were able to develop.
But as a number of media and communication scholars working in the tradition of Carey and medium theorists have recently observed, the history of mobile technologies demonstrates an ongoing linkage with transportation technologies.39 As Mimi Sheller explains, “the advent of mobile communication technologies and software-supported transportation networks also fundamentally changes how communication is thought about, but in this case by re-embedding it into transportation infrastructures and spaces of transit, which are also spaces of transmission.”40 Lisa Parks notes that the term infrastructure emphasizes the materiality and distribution of communication.41 It also reminds us of the territoriality and geography of communication and transport, of questions of power, and the challenge to devise new techniques and modes of visualizing these inter-relations.
Software studies, as it has emerged from the study of network cultures and critical studies of digital media, is another key field for developing a theory of logistical media. Although much more attuned to the work of critique and an often high technical knowledge of digital media, there is a tendency in software studies to focus on open source software and investigate questions of materiality in terms of design and “cultural analytics,” “protocological control,” “media ecologies,” “memory and storage,” and “media archaeology.”43 Combining empirical study with concept development constitutes an intervention within the emergent field of software studies by shifting the analytical gaze from open source software cultures and “cultural analytics” to the vapor-ware meets hard edge of consultancy culture and global infrastructures.44 In doing so, the closed, proprietary systems of software that manage global supply chains have a substantive impact on modes and practices of work.
The scalar dimension of software, for example, is dependent on the interoperability of protocols and the hegemony of standards. As David Dixon, the SAP program manager for the UK supermarket chain Asda (a subsidiary of Wal-Mart) notes, “The main rationale [behind the SAP rollout] was to have a “one version of the truth” approach, to standardize and gain a degree of control around the world.”45 Put another way, the market penetration of software is without doubt shaped by its capacity to communicate with a wide range of software applications and hardware devices. Of course this is only part of the story; nevertheless, interoperability is key to the political economy of software. Once universalized across the vertical distribution of organizations, from large corporations to SMEs, an ERP such as SAP has the power to determine who you do business with by the fact that transactions are simply easier when your trading partner is on the same platform. In other words, a monopoly effect arises from the trans-scalar integration of SAPs across organizational settings. This may seem to be overstating the fact of interoperability between competing ERP systems, but from what I’ve been told by various people working in the world of SAP the tendency is for companies to give preference to other businesses also on the SAP system. Indeed, companies are encouraged by SAP to spread the good word of SAP. I have no idea what sort of commission or negotiated adoption fees companies might attract for such advocacy work.
Enabling the communication of objects, the Internet of Things (IoT) have also become central media components to the logistical industries.46 Consisting of RFID tags, sensors, 3D printing, mobile devices, and software or robotic actuators, the IoT and expansion of communication standards offers a network effect to the silo models of Machine to Machine communication (M2M). New regimes of value and the scalability of data are key attractions the IoT brings to logistical operations, though for a company like SAP the communication of objects would not be likely to occur over a public Internet, but rather through private networks in the interests of data securitization and economies of scarcity. For advocates of a public IoT, this makes the battle over open source standards a central issue. Without them, the capacity for trans-scalar and multi-platform interoperability would be severely circumscribed. As Fenwick McKelvey, Matthew Tiessen and Luke Simcoe note:
The growing mediation of everyday life by the Internet and social media, coupled with Big Data mining and predictive analytics, is turning the Internet into a simulation machine. The collective activity of humanity provides the data that informs the decision making processes of algorithmic systems such as high-frequency trading and aggregated news services that, in turn, are owned by those who wield global power and control: banks, corporations, governments.47 At stake here is the question of accessibility to communications infrastructure, or what Sheller terms “new forms of infrastructural exclusivity,”48 once logistical firms such as SAP become the drivers of developing the Internet of Things. We might also ask what sort of simulation machine do we wish to inhabit?
Conclusion In further developing a logistical media theory, I would suggest three key dimensions of the materiality of communication might serve as framing devices for ongoing research. First, the materiality of concrete things (the infrastructure of ports, IT zones, rail and road transportation, container yards, warehouses). Second, the materiality of communication itself (the spatial, temporal and aesthetic properties of digital communication technologies and software). And third, the materiality of practices that condition the possibility of communication (the labor of coding and design in developing algorithmic architectures coupled with labor experiences and conditions across sectors within the logistics industries).49
Logistical media theory understood within these analytical and material coordinates also holds relevance for research into both the conceptualization and analysis of practices special to locative media. Whether it is RFID tags, GPS devices or Voice Picking technologies, these ubiquitous media of location associated with the Internet of Things assume – like logistics – a world of seamless interoperability. But we know this to be a fantasy of technologists, policy makers and advertizing agencies. Struggles around communication protocols, infrastructural standards, mobile populations and expressions of refusal by labor comprise just some of the glitches that always accompany the operation of locative media as logistical media.:" (http://nedrossiter.org/?p=380)