Planetary Mine as an Archaeology of Labor Futures

摘要

In a 2009 promotional video for the Chilean mining industry, a solemnly toned voiceover describes the robotized trucks in the mines of the Atacama Desert: "In Chile, the most stunning technology on the planet operates in the most arid desert in the world."~1 The desolate and barren slopes of those Andean mining landscapes, the video explained, were being deeply reconfigured by a satellite-driven network of communications technologies, all of which were coordinating a complex division of labor that included robotic trucks, humans, and other types of equipment such as drills, cranes, motor graders, and bulldozers. The technologies celebrated in the video represented just the beginning of a burgeoning revolution in the industry and its workforces. According to a mining company executive in Chile, the young generations of engineers in charge of these teleoperation systems are technologically minded by nature. "For them," he continued, "it is absolutely normal to run a mine with joysticks, keyboards, and screens. In fact, the very idea of working inside the grime and dirt of a mining shaft is appalling for them, and so they tend to live in cities far away from the mines."~2