Anticipating technology-enabled care at home

Abstract

The spread and growth of ubiquitous smart technology to deliver public health outcomes, particularly within/at home, urgently requires greater scholarly attention. This paper uses data from interviews with professionals in Scotland who are designing and implementing Technology-Enabled Care (TEC) for current and future homes. Theoretically informed by both critical geographies of home and futures scholarship, this paper presents a three-part framework – “homes-that-are,” “homes-that-ought,” and “homes-to-be” – to explore the techno-solutionist accounts of home, bringing to bear the messiness and complexity of home, both its conceptualisation and experience. It highlights prediction as an emerging form of anticipatory practice, generating new questions and conceptualisations about the openness of futures. Moreover, it demonstrates the importance of understanding the underlying assumptions of those who make decisions when planning for future TEC and housing; about who they imagine they are planning for, and how diverse these futures are.