The Industrial Revolution has shifted us into a mechanized world starting with the printing press which was introduced to the West in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg. Following the printing press, we saw the development of the assembly line technique of mass production produced by Henry Ford. The assembly line helped produce a high amount of cars and reduced labor for many people. (Vesna, Lecture 1). However, over time the evolution of machinery has gone from assisting humans in mass production to assisting humans in their everyday life.
In 2003, Rodney Brooks spoke on TED Talk about the possibility of robots invading our lives. He stated that he found it hard to believe in a world where we weren’t surrounded by them everyday. His TEDTalk is continuing to be proven prophetic. However, some machines aren’t assisting humans to complete jobs. They are now completing the jobs for us. In the past couple of years we have been slowly introduced to the convenience of self-checkout machines. From my experience, I first spotted stores having around two machines but now these same stores have sections of self-checkout machines. In 2016, Amazon introduced Amazon Go which is a store with no employees that allows customers to shop and walk out with their items. Amazon Go is using a cashier-less technology that automatically charges customers once they walk out of the store. This can be convenient to people who don't have time to wait in line at a checkout stand. However, this is bad news to some cashiers as “a widespread adoption of this technology would eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs” (Schweizer).
Although robots seem threatening to our working environment, they have also greatly integrated into the world of art. In Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” he expresses his concern on how mechanical reproduction can affect the authenticity of art. He believed that repetition and lack of aura in art can decrease its value because it would not be handmade. However, artists like Fred Abels are using machinery to create a new form of art. Fred Abels has created a robot named “Dirk” that resembles a homeless man. This form of art has fascinated many people as they believe Dirk to be a real human being. Dirk has even traveled to countries such as Brazil and Taiwan where he has been welcomed by many people.
Works Cited
Abels, Fred. “Dirk the Homeless Robot.” Electric Circus, http://www.electriccircus.nl/html/dirk-eng.html.
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." 1936
Brooks, Rodney. “Robots Will Invade Our Lives.” TED Talk, https://www.ted.com/talks/rodney_brooks_robots_will_invade_our_lives?language=en.
Schweizer, Errol. “Why Grocery Retailers May Eliminate Cashiers.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 2 Mar. 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2022/03/01/will-grocery-retailers-eliminate-cashiers/?sh=3a43933a7d88.
Vesna, Victoria. "Industrialization, Robotics, Kinetic/Robotic Art." Design Media Arts 9, April 2023, University of California Los Angeles. Lecture.
Images Cited
“Celebrating the Moving Assembly Line in Pictures.” Ford Media Center, The Ford Motor Company , https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/features/celebrating-the-moving-assembly-line-in-pictures.html.
Kraft, Caleb. “Dirk, a Life-like Homeless Robot, Is an Interesting Social Experiment.” Make, 20 July 2016, https://makezine.com/article/technology/dirk-a-life-like-homeless-robot-is-an-interesting-social-experiment/.
Weir, Melanie. “How to Shop at Amazon Go, the Cashierless Store Where You Can Take Your Items and 'Just Walk out'.” Business Insider, Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/how-to-shop-at-amazon-go.
