Open AccessOn "Amazonia"
Author(s) -
Roger Beebe
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
nmc media-n
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1942-017X
DOI - 10.21900/j.median.v16i1.223
Subject(s) - amazon rainforest , magic (telescope) , movie theater , space (punctuation) , point (geometry) , persistence (discontinuity) , virtual space , computer science , business , art , visual arts , engineering , artificial intelligence , physics , mathematics , ecology , geometry , geotechnical engineering , quantum mechanics , biology , operating system
This essay grows out of Amazonia, a 2019 short “desktop cinema” essay film about the cities where Amazon.com had their four original distribution centers. The film uses those cities as a way of thinking about how the virtual economy is transforming real space. Using the film as a starting point, the essay focuses on the specific forms of labor necessitated by e-commerce, exploring most specifically the labor of the “warehouse associates” who perform the manual labor necessary to produce the apparent magic of online purchases. The essay ends with a consideration of the persistence of older forms of physical labor despite the push to automate some parts of these jobs.