Introduction

This is containers in an audio documentary about how the global economy works through the prism of shipping at the port of oakland, sponsored by flexport. For our final two episodes we're going to look deeply at a phenomenon that has profoundly shaped the water front - outomation. Automation is more than a robot waltzing into a job sight and replacing a human on the factory line. It's more like one system of work replaces another. And when it does, whole category es of jobs become obsolete. That's what happened when cargo began to be shipped inside big steel boxes instead of stuffed into the holds of a ship.