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Technologies are a part of our everyday lives. This study looks at technologies from a social perspective. How and why are they a part of our lives, and what effect do they have?
Domestic technologies have become home essentials in the 20th century. Appliances were created to make housework more efficient, however, with all the resources these technologies use, their efficiency has to be questioned.
What does the future hold for domestic appliances, and the home itself? As technology advances, appliances will take on new forms and functionality, but will it make life simpler? The home of the future is often portrayed as a fully automated system, with integrated technologies that will do all the housework, but is this vision likely to come to fruition? What role will convergence play, and where does the user fit in?
Technologies appear to be ubiquitous today, however, some members of society choose not to, or are unable to reap the benefits these technologies may bring. What are the reasons for adoption and non-adoption, and what are the consequences of these trends?
Domestic technologies – more widely known as domestic appliances – started as machines brought in to fill the void left by the diminishing servant in the early 1900s. A housewife could manage a vacuum cleaner more efficiently than the unreliable servant with a dustpan on their hands and knees. Domestic technologies that have become home essentials in the 20th century include heating and cooling, freezers and refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and microwave ovens.
Domestic appliances pride themselves on the ideology of efficiency in a fast-paced life where ‘time is money’. Cieraad (2002) suggests appliances help towards the “efficient organisation of housework with less effort and more success”, with results of comfort, cleanliness and convenience.
But do appliances which help towards the efficiency of housework improve our quality of life or save us time in “activities that are lower-value uses of time [compared to] leisure” (Eom et al. 2005)? A user has to learn how to use the appliance, it is not just a matter of pressing the ‘on’ button and it doing the rest. Domestic appliances can be classified as non-responsive devices (Akrich 1992). Washing machines need clothes to be separated into different fabrics and colours, and the correct setting on the machine has to be chosen. A washing powder or concentrate has to be bought from the supermarket for each load of washing, and chosen for what that product will do (eg. soften fabric, hold colours, and so on). A dishwasher has to be loaded to the manufacturers guidelines to assure the dishes are not broken. And you cannot cook in an oven without knowing how long the food should be in there, as well as the temperature it should be set to.
As Silva (2000) wrote, “Microwave cooking does not free the cook”. Using a cooking appliance still involves checking and assessing of the food while it is in use, and the success of using these appliances comes down to the knowledge of the user.
The convenience of using appliances does not only rely on the user, but the architecture that surrounds it (Frederick 1928), with kitchens having undergone the most substantial changes over the 20th century to accommodate these new technologies. When the freezer was introduced in the 1970s, they were too large and bulky to be present in the kitchen, and instead were kept in the garage for bulk food storage. By the mid-1990s, kitchens were being built around the appliances, which had begun to steer away from the typical whitegoods look by introducing a range of colours and styles (Southerton 2000). Dishwashers and ovens were built to not exceed the height of a 600mm benchtop to fit conveniently into existing kitchens.
When looking at the convenience of domestic technologies, the energy consumption should be taken into account. For example, fridges and freezers currently account for 26% of all energy used on domestic appliances in the home, following heating and lighting (Shove 2003). This is before looking at water consumption of washing machines and dishwashers. If these appliances are not really saving time or money, then why do users choose these machines to do tasks they are capable of?
Domestic technologies have created an expected ‘normality’, to create a situation where life would be difficult to adjust to without them. Is the energy use environmentally unsustainable because of our social ‘norms’ created from our daily routines? As an example of the resources needed for a freezer, Shove et al. (2000) explain: “as well as depending on a reliable electricity supply, and accommodating kitchen designs, freezers presuppose a network of manufacturers, frozen-food producers, global transport systems and agricultural practices”.
Energy efficiency ratings for appliances have now been made mandatory in some countries such as the UK (DECADE 1995, 1997; cited by Shove et al. 2000), however this does not necessarily mean users will replace older appliances with the newer energy efficient models. In current society, entertainment technology is updated more frequently in the family home than domestic appliances. This could be explained by the fact that appliances work on a one-to-one interaction, while entertainment technologies work on a one-to-many interaction. One-to-many means that both users (sending and receiving) need current technology to be able to interact with each other. Fridges and microwaves do not depend on this in the same way a computer does. Any technology with an outside source depends on being new.
‘Appliances’ are seen as machinery to do a task. If the machine does that task adequately, then is there a need to get a new one? Usually not until it breaks. This relates to priorities in family budgets. Users are more likely to budget their money towards the maintenance of the family computer before the washing machine, which could be explained by the functional versus emotional needs in a family home (Baillie et al. 2007). Entertainment technologies are becoming increasingly dominant in the family home, bringing new experiences, memories and meanings which are replacing the experiences domestic technologies brought into the home when they were new.
Technology is always evolving, especially in the home. Appliances and electronics are part of everyday life, but what kind of developments can we expect the future to bring as technology inevitably advances?
Technology has become so well integrated into our lives that it is hard to remember a time when we did not have such ready access to devices such as computers, mobile telephones and even microwave ovens. The home of today is filled with appliances and electronics products; they are part of every room. We use technology to prepare meals, to clean, to entertain – to do almost all tasks around the home.
But what effect will technology have on the home of the future? If television programs and movies are to be believed, the future home will do everything for us at the touch of a button, enabling us to have leisure time all the time. But in reality, many believe this kind of scenario is unrealistic. Intille (2002) explains: “Based on discussions with medical professionals, patients, educators, and homeowners, we believe that the home of most value in the future will not use technology primarily to automatically control the environment but instead will help its occupants learn how to control the environment on their own.” Rather than letting technology do everything for us, Intille (2002) says that “technology should require human effort in ways that keep life as mentally and physically challenging as possible as people age.”
Another take on the home of the future suggests that technology will in a sense become so well integrated into the home, that it will become almost invisible. Hjelm (2005) explains: “According to Philips’s head of design, Stefano Marzano, the home of the future will resemble homes of the past more than the homes of today. Technological gadgets will be gone, and a beautiful painting on the wall also will serve as a television and computer screen. The decorative object on the table will be a communication station, and the powder compact a mini-computer.”
It is not necessarily the designer’s job to hide technology so that it literally becomes ‘invisible’, but more to design appliances and electronics that fit into our lives so well that they become “a natural extension of our hands and mind” (Hjelm, 2005), and therefore we no longer notice them.
As technology advances, we are seeing smaller, more efficient and more complex electronics and appliances. Various functional aspects from old technologies are being combined in brand new ways in evolving electronics. We have telephones that double up as cameras and multimedia devices, fridges that can access the internet, and hand-held game devices that have software that can teach you to prepare and cook meals.
While some embrace these advances in technologies, others argue that this is not necessarily a good thing, “Instead of using the new capabilities to make life simpler, there is the potential for developers to simply overload everyday appliances with endless, and confusing, functionality for its own sake – with little or no thought given to either their usefulness or usability.” (Designing future appliances 2003) The writer argues that advances in computing and communication technology have generally overtaken product development practices, so we are seeing ill thought-out products that have not been properly user tested.
An example of technology with confusing functionality is the VCR, as the paper Designing future appliances (2003) explains: “Every generation of technologies should reduce the complexities introduced by the previous one. But, as experience shows, that is far from always the case. The most notorious example of an everyday technology that baffles attempts to use it is the VCR. Programming some early models was so complicated that the devices were virtually unusable, and years of development appear to have led to only a marginal improvement.”
On the flipside, an example of technology that utilises multi-functionality well is the PlayStation 3 from Sony. The PlayStation 3 is a computer game console that can also act as a home multimedia hub, allowing users to store photos, movies and music. But where it stands out is an application called ‘Folding@home’. “In 2006, Sony teamed up with a research group at Stanford University, CA, USA, called Folding@home, which studies protein folding and diseases such as cancer. Owners of a PlayStation 3 will be able to download software so that their idle game consoles can retrieve data from Folding@home, process these data and molecular simulations, and send them back to the researchers via broadband internet.” (Tilstone 2007) It seems like a strange combination, but a device used primarily for leisure can now be utilised to help researchers find cures for diseases like cancer.
While it is amazing that technology is advancing so fast in this day and age, it can become all too easy to forget exactly who the technology is for. Early adopters generally have no problem picking up the use of the latest electronics with all the latest features, but what about the elderly? Will the home of the future be packed full of technology that is only accessible by early adopters, or will we start to see a shift from feature-packed technology to a more user-centred technology; one that focuses on doing one thing, and doing it well, so that it fits in perfectly with other technologies.
Whilst technology is known for its benefits to society, “not all consumers choose to use the new technologies nor do all consumers see these changes as improvements” (Meuter et al 2003). Why do some adopt new technologies, whilst others do not? What are the ramifications of use and non-use? How can the use of beneficial technologies be promoted?
According to Rogers (1995, cited by Carroll et al. 2002), “individuals tend to expose themselves to ideas that are in accordance with their interests, needs, and existing attitudes.” Hence, technologies are used as an extension of, or to supplement existing lifestyles and interests. For example, in a study on Australian youths conducted by Carroll et al. (2002), “participants identified the need for technologies to support actual rather than hypothetical or possible future activities in their lives: the young people will experiment with a technology if it was perceived that it may be useful in their everyday activities.”
Certain members of society adopt technologies earlier than others. A major factor in this is ‘global innovativeness’. “Global innovativeness is defined as the degree to which an individual makes innovative decisions independently of the communicated experience of others. That is, it is an individual’s predisposition to behave in a given way regardless of the stimuli that activates the behaviour” (Midgley & Dowling 1978; Foxall & Szmigin 1999, cited by Vishwanath 2005). Some notable qualities of a global innovator are a predisposition to risk taking, and a tolerance for uncertainty, novelty and complexity. This makes them open to learning new skills and ideas, and therefore more likely to adopt unfamiliar technologies than others.
Vishwanath discusses other factors that influence people to adopt: “if individuals have friends who tend to be technological innovators themselves and who possess a number of technology products, these friends would, in turn, influence others to adopt.” He also notes that those who already possess certain technological products are more disposed to attaining more: “empirical evidence seems to suggest that the ownership of technological products tend to stimulate the use of other functionally similar products” (Atkin & LaRose 1994; LaRose & Atkin 1988, cited by Vishwanath 2005).
Another major reason for adoption is convenience and ease-of-use. Carroll et al. (2005) suggest that “the familiarity of a technology appears to be one of the main filters for technology adoption: whether it represents a refinement of a technology that young people already use or whether it is a frame-breaking innovation that must be viewed and assessed from scratch.”
However, some members of society choose not to adopt new technologies. One particular group is the elderly.
In the study by Carroll et al. (2002), “one participant described young people’s technologies such as mobile phones, SMS, chat and email as ‘our stuff’ and contrasted it with conventional technologies such as televisions, video recorders and the content of Information Technology subjects taught at school.” This perception is supported by actual patterns of use. Hanley (2002, cited by Selwyn et al. 2003), discusses current technology use by older people. “Although older people’s consumption of established technologies, such as terrestrial television and analogue radio has been found to increase steadily with age, older people remain ‘much less likely to have multi-channel television (particularly satellite) or to have enhancements such as stereo or wide-screen sets [and very few are] in households with computers or DVD players.”
In addition, older people are less likely to use mobile and Internet technologies. Selwyn et al. (2003) state: “non-use of computers can be attributed to their low relevance and ‘relative advantage’ to older people”. Similarly, Carroll et al. (2002) note: “older people struggle to master mobile technologies; they have no frame of reference to operate from as they are radically different from previous technologies.” These ideas are relevant to the (non)use of other technologies in the lives of elderly people.
The elderly have a tendency to perceive new technologies as being too complicated. Morris et al. completed a study focusing on technology use by older members of the workforce. Their findings indicate that “for older individuals, the degree to which the new technology is perceived to be easy to use, e.g., requiring little or no formal training – will be more important in their decision to adopt or reject that technology than it will for younger workers” (Kubeck et al. 1996; Venkatesh et al. 2000, cited by Morris et al. 2005).
A follow-on effect of this is that elderly people are more likely to suffer from ‘technology anxiety’ (Meuter et al. 2005). As a participant in the study by Carroll et al. (2002) noted: “young people learn more easily: ‘we are not afraid to make mistakes’.
However, it has been argued that some non-use of new technologies by elderly people is not by choice. In the case of information technology (IT), “older people are less likely than younger adults to be exposed to new technologies because they are less likely to live with children and were more likely to have left both the educational system and the workplace before the widespread introduction of IT” (Rosen & Weil 1995; Irizarry & Downing 1997, cited by Selwyn et al. 2003).
In addition, much new technology is not designed with older people in mind. Smither and Braun (1994, cited by Selwyn et al. 2003) suggest that “many [technology] products lack features essential for some older adults, such as larger print, audible signals, low memory-load interactions, easy-to-use menus, adequate help signals and so forth.”
The trend of non-use of new technologies by elderly people (and others) has caused a ‘digital divide’. One ramification of this divide is that elderly people are divided from other generations by their non-use of new technologies. Another is a feeling of exclusion; a study by Loges and Jung (2001) found that “41% of those without Internet access in the spring of 2000 were eager to get online. The ‘Eagers’ cited a feeling of ‘missing out’ and a belief ‘that the Net would help them find information.’”
However this non-use does not just affect the individual. Morris et al. discuss the effects of an ageing workforce on organisations. “Age has … proven to be an important demographic variable of interest in organisational settings … This importance is derived from two societal trends: an increasingly older workforce and the rapid introduction of computer technology across virtually all job settings. As a result of these trends, organisations are finding themselves faced with a workforce with dramatically different demographic characteristics than in previous years” (Ford et al. 1996; Rhodes 1983, Sharit & Czaja 1994; Wellsely Centers for Women, 1999, cited by Morris et al. 2005).
As Bernard and Phillips (2000, cited by Selwyn et al. 2003) say, “technology has the ability to improve the situation and quality of life for all people,” however, some members of society choose not to, or are unable to reap the benefits. Servaes (2002, cited by Rice & Katz 2003) says, “the digital divide is a not a technological problem, but rather a social one”. Referring to information and communication technology (ICT), Selwyn et al. advise that “rather than trying to change older adults, older adults should be involved in changing ICT … ICT at the moment is not attractive, interesting or useful for many older adults.” This concept could be applied to many areas of technology. It suggests a move towards a more ‘user-centred’ design approach may be appropriate, and that this may be more than simply a design problem, but also a problem for the makers of social policy.
This study has shown a variety of areas that could be exploited for further research. Each of these would give insight into technology from a social perspective.
With entertainment technology now taking priority in the family home, it would be ideal to bring back the importance of domestic technology, especially in relation to energy efficiency and resource use. It would also be interesting to see if there is any correlation between the correct usage of domestic appliances, energy use, and efficiency.
Looking into the future, it seems that new and exciting technology will become integrated into homes, but there is much debate over what role it will play. It is argued that moving away from a fully automated system for the home would be wise, instead replacing it with a system that prompts users to act, teaching them as they go. As convergence of technologies reaches new levels of complexity, will usability suffer? Will trends of usability today give us some insight into what shape and form technology of the future will take?
In general, elderly people are not fully accessing the benefits of technologies. The reasons cited included a lack of relevance to their lives, and having to acquire an entirely new skills set. How could these obstacles be overcome? Is there a decision to ‘give up’ on new technologies, and at what point does this occur? Further research into these areas not only has the potential to extend knowledge in order to better understand the elderly today, but could also give an insight into what the elderly people of the future might be up against. This research would be particularly relevant, given the ‘ageing population’.
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