‘Delete the family’: platform families and the colonisation of the smart home

On its surface, the ‘smart home’ marks an effort to augment everyday domestic life to the benefit of its members, through the pervasive digital technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT). Through an analysis of the family-imitating group accounts offered by both Google and Amazon, as part of their smart home ecosystems, this paper identifies a project of constructing a new site for platform capitalism, in the form of the platform family, and its effort to pacify domestic life. The platform family is an engineered simulacra of domesticity, formatted to run on the smart home operating system, serving simultaneously as a vehicle for domestic consumption, and a vehicle for consuming domestic life. Drawing on sociology of the family, we contextualise this by showing how the home has long been a site of struggles between internal and external control. Addressing the reconfiguration of membership possibilities within the platform family, we show how it seeks to intervene in domestic life, by reshaping family's material possibilities and normativities. Looking past the technologies to the social forms they imbue reveals a project that is ultimately motivated by a desire to colonise the home as a site for platform capitalism. We conclude by highlighting the potential for resistance in this space and ask whether the homogenisation of domestic life attempted by these interventions is not fundamentally contradictory, in denying the very qualities that give family its value

Excavating humanness: palaeoanthropology at the human-animal boundary

The human-nonhuman animal boundary marks the interchange between human and animal, culture and nature, the social and the natural. This powerfully symbolic site has traditionally been structured via religion-based ideas of humanity's origins, that in the West have been used to maintain a strictly impermeable boundary: humans, created in God's own image and blessed with a soul on one side, on the other the senseless, soulless beast. This image is one which has come under threat from work in multiples branches of the natural and social sciences; in the humanities; and from animal rights activists and other social movements. Such culturally contested territory makes fertile ground for the study of interactions between science and popular culture, framed via Gieryn’s concept of 'boundary-work' (1983), and Bowker & Star’s sociology of classification (2000). Using the fossilised figures of palaeoanthropological research as a prominent site at which the aforementioned boundary is constructed, the thesis considers both how such “missing links” are positioned within the popular human-nonhuman animal dichotomy, and how the boundaries between science and nonscience culture are negotiated during this process. The project makes use of two case studies - the infamous Piltdown Man (discovered 1912) and the recent Flores ‘hobbit’ (2004). Both received huge scientific and popular attention at the time of their respective discoveries, and it is a critical discourse analysis of relevant scientific and popular news media that provides the research data. The thesis addresses how missing links create connections far beyond simply their antecedents and descendants. Indeed, their emblematic position sees them use to explore fundamental notions of humanness, becoming tied to all manner of socio-political ideologies in the process. It is through this process that their ‘natural’ position is made culturally meaningful. Such actions requires repeated transgression of the science-nonscience boundary, a lesson which is used to critique ‘canonical’ and ‘continuum’ models of science communication, and to suggest a more complex, multi-directional ‘hydrological’ model in their place. The thesis concludes by drawing attention to the gaps between formally recognised categories, and how these are utilised by scientists and journalists alike, both in the translation of these missing links between different systems of meaning, and in their role as a creative space for all parties to think with

Differentiating ‘the user’ in DSR: Developing demand side response in advanced economies

This paper reports on the current state of Demand Side Response (DSR) in the UK – an early adoptor amongst advanced economies – and the role of the end user in determining its future. Through 21 expert interviews we establish the current state of DSR, and expectations for its development. Whilst non-domestic DSR appears healthy, if fragile, domestic DSR is considered to be currently unviable, it's future success dependant on market innovations. In following how that situation is expected to change, we highlight key assumptions about prospective end users. These assumptions are shaping the efforts of the industry actors tasked with delivering DSR. We identify two visions of the user, one passive whilst technologies automate on their behalf, the other integrated to the point of themselves being an automaton. We detail a series of concerns about the limitations of these user visions, and the ability of industry to reach beyond them towards a more differentiated view. We conclude with a call to broaden the institutional landscape tasked with delivering DSR, in order to foster a greater diversity of end user roles, and ultimately greater demand responsiveness from a broader user base

Electric Vehicle Home Charging Key Findings And Implications Summary Report

Overview of summary report-Research questions & approach -Headline findings-Barriers -Enablers & policy recommendation

Excavating humanness: palaeoanthropology at the human-animal boundary

The human-nonhuman animal boundary marks the interchange between human and animal, culture and nature, the social and the natural. This powerfully symbolic site has traditionally been structured via religion-based ideas of humanity's origins, that in the West have been used to maintain a strictly impermeable boundary: humans, created in God's own image and blessed with a soul on one side, on the other the senseless, soulless beast. This image is one which has come under threat from work in multiples branches of the natural and social sciences; in the humanities; and from animal rights activists and other social movements. Such culturally contested territory makes fertile ground for the study of interactions between science and popular culture, framed via Gieryn’s concept of 'boundary-work' (1983), and Bowker & Star’s sociology of classification (2000). Using the fossilised figures of palaeoanthropological research as a prominent site at which the aforementioned boundary is constructed, the thesis considers both how such “missing links” are positioned within the popular human-nonhuman animal dichotomy, and how the boundaries between science and nonscience culture are negotiated during this process. The project makes use of two case studies - the infamous Piltdown Man (discovered 1912) and the recent Flores ‘hobbit’ (2004). Both received huge scientific and popular attention at the time of their respective discoveries, and it is a critical discourse analysis of relevant scientific and popular news media that provides the research data. The thesis addresses how missing links create connections far beyond simply their antecedents and descendants. Indeed, their emblematic position sees them use to explore fundamental notions of humanness, becoming tied to all manner of socio-political ideologies in the process. It is through this process that their ‘natural’ position is made culturally meaningful. Such actions requires repeated transgression of the science-nonscience boundary, a lesson which is used to critique ‘canonical’ and ‘continuum’ models of science communication, and to suggest a more complex, multi-directional ‘hydrological’ model in their place. The thesis concludes by drawing attention to the gaps between formally recognised categories, and how these are utilised by scientists and journalists alike, both in the translation of these missing links between different systems of meaning, and in their role as a creative space for all parties to think with

The future as a design problem

An often unacknowledged yet foundational problem for design is how ‘futures‘ are recruited for design practice. This problem saturates considerations of what could or should be designed. We distinguish two intertwined approaches to this: ‘pragmatic projection’, which tries to tie the future to the past, and ‘grand vision’, which ties the present to the future. We examine ubiquitous computing as a case study of how pragmatic projection and grand vision are practically expressed to direct and structure design decisions. We assess their implications and conclude by arguing that the social legitimacy of design futures should be increasingly integral to their construction

Intergenerational interpretation of the Internet of Things

This report investigates how different generations within a household interpret individual members’ data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT). Adopting a mixed methods approach, we are interested in interpretations of the IoT by teenagers, their parents and grandparents, and how they understand and interact with the kinds of data that might be generated by IoT devices. The first part of this document is a technical review that outlines the key existing and envisaged technologies that make up the IoT. It explores the definition and scope of the Internet of Things. Hardware, networking, intelligent objects and Human-Computer Interaction implications are all discussed in detail. The second section focuses on the human perspective, looking at psychological and sociological issues relating to the interpretation of information generated by the IoT. Areas such as privacy, data ambiguity, ageism, and confirmation bias are explored. The third section brings both aspects together, examining how technical and social aspects of the IoT interact in four specific application domains: energy monitoring, groceries and shopping, physical gaming, and sharing experiences. This section also presents three household scenarios developed to communicate and explore the complexities of integrating IoT technologies into family life. The final section draws together all the findings and suggests future research

Smart grids, smart users? The role of the user in demand side management

Smart grids are a key feature of future energy scenarios, with the overarching goal of better aligning energy generation and demand. The work presented here considers the role of the user in such systems, and the contexts in which such roles might emerge. The data used is drawn from focus groups with 72 participants, using novel scenario techniques to contextualise smart grid technologies in domestic settings. Two contrasting visions of the smart grid are presented, a centralised system based on current institutional arrangements, and an alternative system in which decentralisation of generation and control is pursued. Using the concepts of ‘energy consumer’ and ‘energy citizen’, the paper considers what forms of engagement are likely to be generated by the two visions. We propose that smart grid designs must look beyond simply the technology and recognise that a smart user who is actively engaged with energy is critical to much of what is proposed by demand side management. We conclude that the energy citizen holds out most promise in this regard. The implications of this for policy makers are discussed

A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network

Universal Internet access has become critical to modern life, leading to many explorations of approaches to increase its availability. In this paper we report on a study of one such approach, PAWS, that seeks to understand the technical and social constraints of providing Internet access, free at the point of use, by sharing existing broadband subscribers' connections. We elaborate the technical and social context of our deployment, a deprived neighbourhood in a medium-sized British city, and discuss the constraints on and resulting architecture of this system, including the authentication and security mechanisms necessary for a service of this kind. We then report on the use of our deployment over a period of seven months from July 2013 to February 2014, including analyses of the performance and usage of the network. Our data show that PAWS is socially and technically feasible and has the potential to provide Internet access economically to many who are currently digitally disenfranchised. However, doing so requires overcoming numerous challenges, both technical and socia