The privacy implications of social robots: Scoping review and expert interviews

In this contribution, we investigate the privacy implications of social robots as an emerging mobile technology. Drawing on a scoping literature review and expert interviews, we show how social robots come with privacy implications that go beyond those of established mobile technology. Social robots challenge not only users’ informational privacy but also affect their physical, psychological, and social privacy due to their autonomy and potential for social bonding. These distinctive privacy challenges require study from varied theoretical perspectives, with contextual privacy and human–machine communication emerging as particularly fruitful lenses. Findings also point to an increasing focus on technological privacy solutions, complementing an evolving legal landscape as well as a strengthening of user agency and literacy

Accountability and neglect in UK social care innovation

Accountability structures in social care are critical. They facilitate democratic decision-making, responsibility and the equitable distribution of benefits. This study examines how innovation and technology is implicated in such structures. In the UK, innovation and technology researchers have predominantly imagined care as service provision, with accountability structured through paternalistic and technocratic configurations of people, materials and knowledge. Aligning with incumbent policy and interests, these structures neglect significant groups of actors and issues, with implications for ongoing vulnerabilities in the sector. This study empirically identifies diverse possibilities for how innovation could reconfigure accountability structures in inclusive, participative and less neglectful ways

Ageing and Technology: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. In current debates on technology, however, the "human factor" is often largely ignored. The ageing individual is rather seen as a malfunctioning machine whose deficiencies must be diagnosed or as a set of limitations to be overcome by means of technological devices. This volume aims at focusing on the perspective of human beings deriving from the development and use of technology: this change of perspective - taking the human being and not technology first - may help us to become more sensitive to the ambivalences involved in the interaction between humans and technology, as well as to adapt technologies to the people that created the need for its existence, thus contributing to improve the quality of life of senior citizens