Automation and human agency in the line 4 of São Paulo subway

Abstract

We consider the subway as a large ensemble of communicative circuits in which messages and people circulate.A subway’s communicative circuits form a surface of interfaces in which machinery work and human agency are coupled. In this paper we investigate aspects of the experience of full automatic train operation in the Yellow Line 4 (Linha 4-Amarela) of the subway in São Paulo. With the introduction of the new automatisms, human presence is displaced and relocated — or suppressed as in the case of the human pilot — creating a new regime of interfaces. Based on ethnographic data, we analyse the social reception of these changes and explore the particular forms of connection between the technical and the human as this project is deployed in the concrete setting of subway rides.