Paper short abstract:

The paper explores a gerontechnological care-coordinating device. It draws on ethnographical accounts of user-technology practices before, during and after 105 service interactions in home care services. It offers suggestions for studying impacts of organizational gerontechnologies in clients’ lives

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the effects of a gerontechnological care-coordinating software by drawing on results of an empirical study of user-technology practices in the context of the Norwegian Home Care Services.

In Norway the implementation of this and other gerontechnologies is part of a political reformation of the Norwegian welfare state. The implementation of such 'welfare technologies' (NOU 2011:11) are seen as a solution to the combined problem of a rapidly ageing population and a lack of resources because they are believed to result in practices of resource rationalization which do not conflict with clients' needs and rights.

By drawing on domestication theory (Berker et al, 2006; Lie and Sørensen, 1996/2002) I argue that user-technology relationships are empirical sites where the technology and its effects, in terms of impacts in clients' everyday lives, become enacted.

The study was conducted during the autumn of 2015 and draws on ethnographical accounts of technology-user practices before, during and after 105 interactions between home care workers and their clients, as well as organizational documents.

The paper contributes to the debates on how technology-user relationships may be understood as empirical sites of particular importance for the exploration of the effects of organizational gerontechnologies in the lives of welfare institutions' clients.