Anticipating Technology‐Enabled Care at home

Abstract

If we could get to the stage where the house could say Betsyʼs taking an hour to get dressed in the morning, this is far too long, she needs somebody to go and help her, without her having to go and make a fuss about it, thatʼs where I would want to be. (Housing Professional 1) Home is a well-established area of geographical scholarship (

Algorithmic epistemologies and methodologies: Algorithmic harm, algorithmic care and situated algorithmic knowledges

“…Smart home technology has the potential to enable people to age in place, affording them independence and autonomy for as long as possible and providing a feasible, less expensive and preferable alternative to institutional care (Carnemolla, 2018, 2;Reid, 2021a;Reid, 2021b). The ability to be 'algorithmically cared for' at home has become more accessible due to the proliferation of smart home devices.…”

“…For example, Carnemolla shows how automated lights used in conjunction with a handrail made moving from the bedroom to the bathroom safer for a person who had declining balance, or how installing a video doorbell for someone with mobility issues changed the way that care could be provided, by allowing a family member to remotely screen people at the door (Carnemolla, 2018: 13). The technological mediation of informal care practices among families caring for older relatives is discussed by Reid (2021a; 2021b: 85), who notes the uptake of easily accessible technology enabled care devices, such as Google Nest, but highlights the tension that exists between care and risk, considering the capacity for surveillance these devices entail (see also Maalsen and Sadowski, 2019).…”

“…The benefits of assisted living devices have real consequences, enabling people to stay at home with a level of independence for longer, providing a level of care that was previously not accessible in the home. Smart home technology has the potential to enable people to age in place, affording them independence and autonomy for as long as possible and providing a feasible, less expensive and preferable alternative to institutional care (Carnemolla, 2018, 2; Reid, 2021a; Reid, 2021b). The ability to be ‘algorithmically cared for’ at home has become more accessible due to the proliferation of smart home devices.…”

Care for Transactions

“…This includes being care‐ full about care itself. As journal editors we have sought to be mindful about the uneven‐ness of the care burdens faced by authors and reviewers through the peer review process at the same time as we have sought to surface critical geographical work that highlights how such inequalities have been exacerbated across multiple care geographies impacted by austerity and the COVID pandemic (Clarke & Barnett, 2022; Gayle, 2020; Herrick et al, 2022; Mould et al, 2022; Reid, 2022; Schliehe et al, 2022; Sparke & Anguelov, 2020).…”

“…These include concern for how the digital is remapping human and non‐human relations as well as digital maps themselves, with a growing interest in digital natures, digital ecologies, digital cities, digital geopolitics and even digital territory (Datta, 2018; Morris, 2022; Prebble et al, 2021; Searle et al, 2023; Smith et al, 2020; Woods, 2021; Zook & Graham, 2018). While smart urbanism and associated forms of platform capitalism continue to highlight the interdependencies of code/space, scholarship on digital geographies is also documenting spatial inequities within these interdependencies at multiple scales and in particular places, ranging from the platforms of online education and debt relations to the embodied experience of tech‐enabled home care (House‐Peters et al, 2019; Reid, 2022; Roos‐Breines et al, 2019: Sparke, 2017; Tan, 2022). Feminist arguments in these debates point to the contradictory possibilities of thriving otherwise and staying with the trouble of such digital spaces (McLean, 2020), and we think that a care‐full Transactions can continue to stay with the trouble in a similar way as it adapts to the wider changes forced on journals and their editors by the online ecosystems for publishing in which we are now embedded.…”