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Short abstract:

This paper offers a case study of a machine-learning enabled system for remote monitoring of people living at home with long term conditions such as dementia, exploring the mundane challenges experienced by smart care users and examining the distribution of labour that addresses these challenges.

Long abstract:

This paper offers a case study of the development of a machine-learning enabled system for remote monitoring of people living at home with long term conditions such as dementia. The study involved interviews with researchers and developers and healthcare professionals involved in developing and delivering the system and also smart care users and their carers. From each perspective, an array of challenges were identified that impeded smooth progress towards the envisaged goal of an intelligent monitoring system able to deliver clinical benefits in terms of reduced hospitalization and longer safe living in the place of the user’s preference. This paper focuses specifically on the challenges identified by smart care users and their carers, including such practical, mundane issues as batteries that run out, sensors that fall off doors, houses that do not conform to designers’ expectations about house layout, weighing scales that need more balance than a user can deliver, physiological measurement devices that do not work for cold hands or on hot days and lifestyles that confound attempts at meaningful machine learning. The paper explores the distribution of labour involved in addressing these challenges across the users and carers, healthcare professionals and researchers and developers, finding that at least in some cases there are steps that can be taken to avoid practical mundane challenges becoming an additional, invisible burden on carers. The paper thus contributes to a growing field of literature focused on the labour of datafication with a reflection on how that labour is distributed.

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Long abstract:

The integration of machine learning (ML) into the analysis of domestic data to predict domestic routines around, for example, climate control, energy usage, and grocery shopping is becoming increasingly prevalent. ML models leverage this data to inform the design of future products aimed at automating (parts of) these practices to varying degrees of accuracy. However, the use of domestic data to develop ML-enabled systems for the home is not without its challenges.

One significant challenge stems from the dynamic nature of households’ everyday lives. Continuous changes in composition, routines, and preferences introduce variability that is difficult to anticipate. Additionally, domestic data gathered from sensors and other quantitative sources, is de-contextualized and thus loses nuance and interpretability when household members are not actively involved in the process. Moreover, as ML systems accumulate data over time, they tend to perform better for common user types and contexts while struggling with less typical ones. As such, ML-enabled systems pose the risk of disrupting how households’ structure their everyday lives at home.

In response to these challenges, there is a growing need for anticipatory design practices. This presentation will discuss the findings of my designerly exploration of algorithmic prototyping to better understand potential disturbances introduced by ML-enabled technologies into everyday domestic life. Lessons learned from this exploration lead to the proposal of a designerly baseline modeling approach. This approach aims to facilitate collaboration between designers and data scientists by combining contextual insights into the complexities of everyday life with quantitative insights into their patterns.

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Long abstract:

Reinforced by the pandemic, institutionalized Holocaust remembrance implements more digital technologies (Ebbrecht-Hartmann 2020, 2021). Museums and Memorial Sites today are equipped with touchscreens and media stations, they provide virtual tours of historic sites or even virtual holograms enabling a dialogue with soon to be deceased Holocaust-survivors. Digital technologies promise to attract younger generations and squire the path to a future of Holocaust remembrance after the "era of the witness" (Wievieorka 2006).

Museum workers and researchers stress the potentials of new technologies, pointing out the educational and ethical challenges of mediating history with technology. However, daily failures, glitches, troubles, and the necessary maintenance work are rarely addressed. This is caused not only by a forgetfulness of failure (Appadurai/Alexander 2020) but by an underemphasis of the material, bodily and emotional practices of commemoration.

The paper follows the panel's invitation to explore the disturbances of digital infrastructures in commemoration practices. It aims to outline a study of tech-failure in virtual Holocaust remembrance and thereby theorize the fragility of failure-research itself – especially in a morally charged field. The example of 'immersion' shows the tension of technological possibilities, promises and breakdowns. Observations drawn from a DFG-funded project ‘From the Era of the Witness to Digital Remembrance’ show, a) how glitches and tech-fails are being rationalized as useful, b) how ignoring fragilities is agreed on as feeding a greater good c) how highlighting technological failure broadens the understanding of the daily practices of remembrance while at the same time raising ethical concerns for the researcher.

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Long abstract:

In this study, we explore the sociotechnical imaginaries and educational cares of a library project that arranges activities where children interact and read together with the robot Bibi. Here, the robot becomes a node within the traditional welfare system where public libraries, tech corporations, schools, children, and books meet in an endeavor to encourage and develop children’s reading. Our study material consists of field observations, interviews with librarians and project managers, and official web material. The study shows how reading (with a robot) is enacted as a care practice (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017), where caring for the children’s reading and literature is displaced by care for the robot, in care practices that uphold the enchantment of the robot (Natale, 2021). Caring for the robot has unexpected and unintended effects such as failures, disruptions, exclusions and even violence, which – of course - chafe with the aim of the project. Because, although the robot is designed as a care robot that is imagined to help children who struggle with reading, this is in fact the task that the robot might be least equipped to do. Care work here entails repairing Bibi’s rude flaws – like interruptions, looking away when someone is reading, falling asleep while children are reading, or not understanding if they read too quietly or have an accent. For Bibi to understand the children, they must be made robot-readable. So, to uphold the imaginary of Bibi as a more than non-human, everyone around her needs to be less human.

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Long abstract:

Before mechanization, telephone switching operation was the job of young unmarried women. In the United States, the Bell Company commercialized the operators’ gendered traits of obedience, discretion, and patience for its male customers. Existing literature has examined how the Bell Company trained its early operators to serve as ‘quasi-secretaries’ or ‘quasi-maids,’ and in the 20th century, as standardized woman-machines. On the other hand, this study explores the hidden authority and skill of female operators in post-war Korea. Although Korea was - and still is - a strong patriarchal society with low female status, and the Ministry of Postal Service instructed the female operators to be submissive, many operators were unkind and sometimes scolded the callers. We associate this phenomenon with the material condition of the Korean telephone system at the time. According to actor-network theory, nonhuman technology does not passively transport action as 'intermediaries', but rather modify relations between actors as 'mediators'. During the Korean War of 1950-1953, 80% of all telecommunications infrastructure was destroyed, and for many decades afterward, equipment shortage and breakdown were prevalent. Calls were often delayed or misdirected, and users always had to wait for a long time to be connected. In this sociotechnical system, the female operators in Korea could exercise considerable power. They privileged or disadvantaged certain users, accepted bribes, and eavesdropped on the callers. This study will show that the social function of technology is never monolithic, and that the specificities of technology can transform human agency and even overturn gender norms.

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Long abstract:

This paper presents a case study of a longstanding faculty scholarship program in Indonesia, known for enduring challenges. Despite transitioning to an e-government-based model leveraging ICT for applications and progress reporting, persistent and emerging challenges threatened its success. However, the program triumphed through the proactive adoption of workarounds by users, who utilized their skills and networks to navigate these obstacles. The analysis reveals that the most effective categorization of observed workarounds is based on the actors involved. These workarounds are classified into four levels: 1) individual initiatives targeting specific goals, 2) collaborative efforts with peers, 3) facilitation or execution by external parties enabling individuals to achieve their goals, and 4) workarounds driven by public participation, empowering individuals to overcome challenges collectively. This comprehensive examination illuminates the dynamic interplay between top-down strategies and bottom-up solutions in the context of an e-government-based scholarship program. Despite facing persistent hurdles, the program's resilience stems from the ingenuity and adaptability of its users, showcasing the intricate landscape of challenges and the multifaceted nature of successful workarounds. This case study extracts valuable insights into the nuanced dynamics of e-government implementation, providing lessons for future endeavors in similar contexts.

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Long abstract:

Government bureaucracies are fruitful sites for infrastructural analysis, full as they are of “the basic, the boring, the mundane, and all the mischievous work done behind the scenes” (Peters, 2015, 33). This is particularly the case of welfare state bureaucracies, systems that Tracey, Garcia, and Punzalan have called “infrastructures of last resort” (2023). As algorithms and other digital tools are increasingly integrated into these infrastructures, frontline workers' roles shift too. If previously, frontline bureaucracy consisted of flexibly administering “thick” rules; today, frontline bureaucrats must troubleshoot and work-around the failings of “thin” ones (Daston, 2022).

This paper presents ongoing ethnographic work examining infrastructural failure, maintenance, and mediation in the US homeless services system. In particular, this work investigates how frontline bureaucrats mediate between the rigidity of the infrastructure, and the messy social worlds of people experiencing homelessness. Drawing on theories of translation and articulation work, the paper proposes “intermediation” as a means of understanding the position, and the labor, of being in-between an infrastructure and the social worlds it intersects. As an analytic, intermediation illuminates how care through data and care for data intertwine and overlap. Through a series of illustrative examples, the paper demonstrates how intermediation powerfully shapes the impact of an infrastructure on the people who interact with it. It closes with a meditation on the paradoxical nature of intermediation: simultaneously providing vital support to an infrastructure, and seeking to escape it.

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Long abstract:

With the advancing digitalization of critical infrastructure, the importance of addressing cybersecurity vulnerabilities becomes increasingly apparent. Specifically, within the context of smart grid development, cybersecurity emerges as a paramount concern for transmission and distribution operators, as well as end-users alike. Notably, events such as the December 2015 Ukraine power blackout (Cyber Law, 2015) serve as an poignant reminders of the real and pressing threats posed by cyber attacks on power grids. More recently, incidents like the May 2023 attack on Danish energy infrastructure (Sector CERT, 2023) further underscore the urgency of bolstering cybersecurity measures.

Given Norway’s significant reliance on electrical energy and its aspirations for developing a robust smart grid for of the future, this paper seeks to explore how various experts articulate the concepts of professional expertise, values, and norms within the domain of smart grid cybersecurity. Drawing upon the STS repertoire and employing methodology that combines document analysis with semi-structured interviews with cybersecurity specialists in the energy sector of Norway, this study delves into the intricate negotiation of securing the fragile digital infrastructure through the lens of cybersecurity expertise as an everyday practice.

In its exploration, the paper endeavors to achieve two primary objectives. Firstly, it aims to unpack the contestations surrounding the concept of smart grid cybersecurity by elucidating the diverse meanings, roles, rules, and norms associated with it. Secondly, the analysis seeks to scrutinize the varied articulations of smart grid cybersecurity concepts among different groups of experts in Norway. Through this comprehensive examination, the study endeavors to provide insights into the complex landscape of smart grid cybersecurity, shedding light on the nuances of expert discourse and practice in addressing this critical aspect of energy infrastructure modernization.