2: Automation and the Emerging Contours of Digital Society

Disruptive technologies include mobile telephony, social media, big data, the Internet of Things, networked video-mediated communications, smart urban sensors, domiciled voice agents and, more recently, generative artificial intelligence (AI). While the disruptive effects of these technologies have been noted in relation to transformations in markets, supply chains and economic value pools, it is only in recent years that this suite of transformative technologies has been approached and analysed in terms of wider societal impact and implications.

This chapter explores how the networked, algorithmic, distributed and automated features of these technologies generate interconnected social implications that shape some of the key societal challenges and opportunities in the 21st century. The focus of this chapter is directed towards matters relating to automation as an important feature of digital architectures and socio-technical settings characterised by algorithmic, networked and data-generative features. The latest developments in disruptive digital technology include an emerging suite of generative ‘artificial intelligent’ applications that have been transformed through the arrival of Large Language Models and their current refinement through global public engagement and expansion via multi-modal capacities that include text, image, video and voice.