This post is part of the paper, ‘Friction-free cities and the rise of contactless and robotised delivery infrastructure’, published in City. Architect Sam Jacob (2015) claimed that ‘the city itself is a distributed robot’ where ‘we [might be] liberated to become friction-free smart citizens … doing our own thing’ (p. 25). In making a frictionless……
Tag: vignette
Robotised space and humans as subjects of care or sources of friction
This post is part of the PhD thesis ‘The Smart City in Motion’. NAVER 1784, described by Kyungmin at Baemin Robotics Lab as ‘the utopia for indoor delivery robots’ during the interview, demonstrates how humans and robots might co-exist in shared robotised space. NAVER 1784 is the second headquarters of the Korean tech giant Naver,……
Encountering Dilly and its human guardian
Part of this post is published in City: ‘Friction-free cities and the rise of contactless and robotised delivery infrastructure’. Gwanggyo and other urban robotic labs allow us to grapple with the ongoing ‘infrastructuralisation of robotically augmented cities’ (While et al., 2021, p. 781), as delivery robots are woven into the urban landscapes and humans and……
‘Searching for the right delivery for you…’, says AI
This post is part of the paper, ‘Connected, programmed, and immobilised A mobile ethnography of platform-mediated food delivery in Seoul’, published in Mobilities. Couriers greet each other (if they greet) by saying, ‘are there any calls?’, especially at the edges of peak times and during low seasons when the supply of couriers is excessive. Waiting……
‘I don’t want to walk for free anymore’, says Eunyoung
This post is part of the paper, ‘Connected, programmed, and immobilised A mobile ethnography of platform-mediated food delivery in Seoul’, published in Mobilities. The rise of mobility platforms contributes to encouraging and commodifying movements of citizens. In line with many smart city apps anticipate their users to be mobile bodies, viewing them normatively and financially valuable (Rose……
The making of a Baemin courier
At 10 pm, I logged in as I was leaving home carrying a cubic thermal bag on my back as usual. My phone and GoPro were fully charged. The Baemin AI quickly found an order for me. I accepted it without even checking what it was because I must—I heard from my interviewees that rejecting……
Platform work pays fairly, says K-Meritocracy
This post is part of the paper, ‘Connected, programmed, and immobilised A mobile ethnography of platform-mediated food delivery in Seoul’, published in Mobilities. Among Baemin couriers, there exists a belief that food delivery work rewards fairly—despite the obscure algorithms—compared to other types of work. As an online business owner, Minsu’s income depends on unpredictable demand from customers. Delivering……