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Short abstract:

In this study, we explore the failures of sociotechnical imaginaries and educational cares when a robot becomes a node within the traditional welfare system in an endeavor to encourage children’s reading. Caring for the robot has unexpected effects such as disruptions, exclusions and even violence.

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.