The political economy of robots: prospects for prosperity and peace in the automated 21st century

Contents -- Editor and Contributors -- Acronyms -- 1 Robots and Political Economy -- Utopia or Reality? -- Human Prosperity and Peace -- Information and the Robotic Revolution -- References -- 2 The Politics of Global Value Chains -- Introduction -- Origins and Scope of the GVC -- IPR and Corporate Hegemony -- Transnational Corporations and Contract Manufacturers -- ECM, Labor, and the Race to the Bottom -- Automation, Change, and Adjustment -- Conclusion -- References -- 3 Drug Smuggling and Automated Borders: A Losing Battle of Escalation or State/Non-state Symbiosis -- 4 Policy Implications of People Analytics and the Automated Workplace -- Introduction -- People Analytics -- Artificial Intelligence and Software Algorithms -- Robotics -- Conclusion -- References -- 5 Automatic Medicine? Technology and the Future of Primary Health Care -- Introduction -- Philosophy of Medical Technology -- Three Examples -- Discussion -- Conclusion -- References -- 6 Repressive Robots and the Radical Possibilities of Emancipated Automation -- Weapons Grade Law Enforcement -- Lethal Robots and the Repressive State Apparatus -- The Shattered Laws of Robotics -- Radically Humanized Technology? -- Thinking Fromm's Futures in Blomkamp's Elysium and Chappie -- Concluding Remarks -- References -- 7 The Political Economy of Bots: Theory and Method in the Study of Social Automation -- Introduction -- A Brief History of Bots -- A Bot Timeline -- Automated Actors and Political Communication -- Units of Analysis: Old, New, and Aggregate -- Understanding Networks -- Understanding Software and Algorithms -- Understanding Modifications to Classical Units of Analysis -- Automation, Qualitative Methods, and STS -- Reconsidering Without Reinventing: Key Concepts in Ethnography of Information -- The "Technically" Social: Challenges to Theory and Method