It's not (just) about the robots: care and carelessness across an automated supply chain
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Abstract
What started off as rather tame research on integrating care into retail robots, ended up as a creative and political call to upend increasingly automated food systems. Ley argues that robotics are the next step in a long history of separation from the human and non-human life involved in getting food on the table. The dissertation itself documents the author's unravelling as she comes to a concluding ethical vision: a messy and inefficient life of interconnection, led by the senses.
The dissertation draws together myriad academic fields, from philosophy of technology, phenomenology, robot-ethics, feminist theory, ethics of care, science and technology studies, and decolonial practices. Woven around the traditional academic chapters are poems, stories, creative prose, post-its, and photographs. By stretching into the creative and intuitive realms, the dissertation envisions what philosophy of technology might look like.