On the role of technology in human-dog relationships: a future filled with dreams or nightmares?

Abstract

Digital technologies that help us take care of our dogs are becoming more widespread. Yet, little research explores what the role of technology in the human-dog relationship should be. We conducted a mixed-method study incorporating quantitative and qualitative thematic analysis of 155 UK dog owners reflecting on their daily routines and technology's role in it, disentangling the what-wherewhy of interspecies routines and activities, technological desires, and rationales for technological support across common human-dog activities. We found that increasingly entangled daily routines lead to close multi-species households where dog owners conceptualize technology as having a role to support them in giving care to their dogs. When confronted with the role of technology across various activities, only chores like cleaning up after our dogs lead to largely positive considerations, while activities that benefit us like walking together lead to largely negative considerations. For other activities, whether playing, training, or feeding, attitudes remain diverse. In general, across all activities both a nightmare scenario of technology taking the human's role and in doing so disentangling the human-dog bond, as well as a dream scenario of technology augmenting our abilities arise. We argue that the current trajectory of digital technology for pets towards allowing dog owners to interact with their dogs while away-feeding, playing, and so on-is an example of this nightmare scenario becoming reality, and that it is important to redirect this trajectory to one of technology predominantly supporting us in becoming better and more informed caregivers.

Animal-centered design needs dignity: a critical essay on ACI’s core concept

“…I find "major interference with an animal's abilities" to be particularly significant for ACI researchers and technologists, as we should read this not purely as an animals ability to maintain its normal physical behaviors, but to ensure that its natural social context, the human-animal relationship, is not radically altered. Consider, for example, the increasing prevalence of technology that (even if partially) substitutes humans in human-dog relationships [40]. Designing technology exactly for this purpose, or not critically questioning that it might lead to such, certainly interferes with an animal's natural ability and expectation to have interspecies relationships, and, to us, reduces its dignity.…”