Knowledge

As the world collectively looks to technology to salvage what is left of our world to sustain a habitat that can accommodate our way of life, users are increasingly exposed to technological solutions, rarely developed with an offset in their practice. This also holds for the maritime sector in Denmark, where the way of developing technology is limited to the applicability of technological artifacts and can reduce the potential efficiency gains that technologies can introduce. This paper applies qualitative research to show that there is a disconnect between, on the one hand, funders, technology developers, and decision-makers and, on the other hand, technology users and practitioners in the Danish maritime sector. It argued that if technology is to replace or assist any human practice and solve for example the climate crises, then knowledge of users’ practices must be key to developing the technological solutions.

In this webinar, Adrienne Mannov from Aarhus University and Peter Aske Svendsen from NFA presented their research on autonomous shipping as this relates to seafaring and technology, based on their 2019 report, “Transport 2040: Autonomous ships: A new paradigm for Norwegian shipping - Technology and transformation”.

The event was organized in collaboration with MARLOG

The maritime industry is a dangerous and highly technologicallysaturated sector. Unfortunately, advancement in automation and technologyhave not minimised human error as intended. Interaction between humansand technology in the industry is also overtly pre-scripted. The main reasonfor this is to reduce human error by ensuring predictability in interaction.Ultimately, investigations of non-routine interaction are often based on a hind-sight view of what went wrong in a given situation. This article analyses acollection of non-routine interactions that derive from a larger data corpus,using Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis. It argues that such astudy can capture what is missing from some investigations, namely, whatmakes sense for crews in the context of a given non-routine situation. Despitethe constraints and the challenges of technological complexity, this articleargues that reframing psychological matters in non-routine technologicallymediated interaction can be a new way of showing how such matters aredynamic, visible and manageable. This can inform the general debate of howto minimise human error, and more specifically, provide insight into the increas-ing inclusion of technology and as a consequence, the equally increasingamount of technologically mediated interaction that we will see in the future.