When we understand automation it’s often through the image-in-thought of a 1:1 replacement or substitution of existing forms of human work.
A factory worker responsible for glueing a sole to a shoe is replaced by a robot who can record and reproduce the same nuanced actions.
The Detroit auto worker who installs doors is replaced by the mechanical arm that lifts and places it. Let’s call this ‘analog automation.’
But what if the process of automation redefines the object itself? Rather than a cobbled production, with intricate stitching and a delicately nailed heel, what if a shoe could be created in a single injection? The labor of production is simplified into a ready-moulded Croc.
There’s a certain type of automation that is not the direct transposition of a sequence of manual acts into an automatic ones, but the redefinition of the product for the sake of automated simplification. Let’s call this ‘derivate automation.’
Examples of this would be
- 3D printed houses
- Injection-moulded shoes
- Digital advertising
Simplify, standardize, automate.
How does simplification, standardization and automation scale beyond physical goods?
A key example from the past decade has been the reconfiguration of advertising through Facebook – the grand aggregator and modularizer.
In the halcyon days of pre-internet advertising, the steps to releases an ad into to the world were complex and high-friction.
A company would need to work with elaborate aggregators of physical advertising space (billboards, commercial breaks, centrefolds etc) to determine where an ad would go, and elaborate production teams (printers, installers, tv producers) to actually put them there*.
In the age of electronic reproduction, advertising becomes a near-frictionless process. Now creative is simply transposed effortlessly across myriad newsfeed spaces, digital carousels, and sidebar advertising space.
The internet, below its seeming diversity, is compartmentalized into discreet (comprehensible) units of advertising space. Buying these discreet spaces is as simple as injection-moulding a Croc.
