The Smart Wife

Why Siri, Alexa, and Other Smart Home Devices Need a Feminist Reboot

Bibliographic Data

ID19973311
AuthorsYolande Strengers (0000-0002-5664-621X, RMIT Europe), Jenny Kennedy (0000-0001-9489-5471, MIT University)
Year2020
Pages312
Publication date2020-09-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueSmart Wife (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherThe MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7551/mitpress/12482.001.0001
OpenAlexW3083377141
Open LibraryOL29888005M
ISBN9780262360036
LanguageEN
Citations received101

This is a fascinating look at the gendering of smart homes, how they came to be so, and how modern households can and should be domains of equality. Meet the Smart Wife--at your service, an eclectic collection of feminized AI, robotic, and smart devices. This digital assistant is friendly and sometimes flirty, docile and efficient, occasionally glitchy but perpetually available. She might go by Siri, or Alexa, or inhabit Google Home. She can keep us company, order groceries, vacuum the floor, turn out the lights. A Japanese digital voice assistant--a virtual anime hologram named Hikari Azuma--sends her "master" helpful messages during the day; an American sexbot named Roxxxy takes on other kinds of household chores. In The Smart Wife, Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy examine the emergence of digital devices that carry out "wifework"--domestic responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to (human) wives. They show that the principal prototype for these virtual helpers--designed in male-dominated industries--is the 1950s housewife- white, middle class, heteronormative, and nurturing, with a spick-and-span home. It's time, they say, to give the Smart Wife a reboot

Anime · Housewife · Operating system · Political science · Reboot · Sociology · Telecommunications · Theology · Wife · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Engineering

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