Everyday Automation: Experiencing and Anticipating Emerging Technologies

251 Pages·2022·5.885 MB·English

by  Sarah Pink (editor), Martin Berg (editor), Deborah Lupton (editor), Minna Ruckenstein (editor)

EVERYDAY AUTOMATION
This Open Access book brings the experiences of automation as part of quotidian life into
focus. It asks how, where and when automated technologies and systems are emerging in
everyday life across diferent global regions? What are their likely impacts in the present and
future? How do engineers, policy makers, industry stakeholders and designers envisage artifcial
intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) as solutions to individual and societal
problems? How do these future visions compare with the everyday realities, power relations
and social inequalities in which AI and ADM are experienced? What do people know about
automation and what are their experiences of engaging with ‘actually existing’ AI and ADM
technologies? An international team of leading scholars brings together research developed
across anthropology, sociology, media and communication studies and ethnology, which shows
how by rehumanising automation, we can gain deeper understandings of its societal impacts.
Sarah Pink is Professor at Monash University Australia, where she is Director of the
Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Associate Director of the Monash Energy Institute
and an investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated
Decision-Making and Society.
Martin Berg is Professor of Media Technology at Malmö University, Sweden. He coordinates
the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond’s research network Re-humanising Automated Decision-
Making and co-directs Malmö University’s strategic research programme Data Society.
Deborah Lupton is SHARP Professor in the Centre of Social Research in Health and
Social Policy Research Centre, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney. She
leads the Vitalities Lab and the UNSW Node of the Australian Research Council Centre of
Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
Minna Ruckenstein is Associate Professor in the Centre for Consumer Society Research,
University of Helsinki. She leads an interdisciplinary research group that studies algorithmic
culture and organisational and societal processes in relation to automated decision-making.

EVERYDAY
AUTOMATION
Experiencing and Anticipating
Emerging Technologies
Edited by Sarah Pink, Martin Berg, Deborah
Lupton and Minna Ruckenstein
Cover image: Kwanchai Lerttanapunyaporn/EyeEm/Getty Images
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Sarah Pink, Martin Berg, Deborah
Lupton, Minna Ruckenstein; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Sarah Pink, Martin Berg, Deborah Lupton, Minna
Ruckenstein to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and
of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com,
has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non
Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pink, Sarah, editor.
Title: Everyday automation : experiencing and anticipating emerging
technologies / edited by Sarah Pink, Martin Berg, Deborah Lupton,
Minna Ruckenstein.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2021056583 (print) | LCCN 2021056584 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367773403 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367773380 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003170884 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Technology—Social aspects. | Automation—Social
aspects. | Human-computer interaction-—Social aspects.
Classifcation: LCC T14.5 .E965 2022 (print) | LCC T14.5 (ebook) |
DDC 303.48/3—dc23/eng/20220131
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056583
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021056584
ISBN: 978-0-367-77340-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-77338-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-17088-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003170884
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of fgures viii
List of contributors x
Acknowledgements xvi
Everyday automation: Setting a research agenda 1
Sarah Pink, Minna Ruckenstein, Martin Berg and Deborah Lupton
PART I
Challenging dominant narratives of automation 21
1 Imagining mundane automation: Historical trajectories of
meaning-making around technological change 23
Lina Rahm and Anne Kaun
2 Trust, ethics and automation: Anticipatory imaginaries in
everyday life 44
Sarah Pink
3 The quantifed pandemic: Digitised surveillance,
containment and care in response to the COVID-19 crisis 59
Deborah Lupton
4 Less work for teacher? The ironies of automated decision-
making in schools 73
Neil Selwyn
vi Contents
PART II
Embedding automated systems in the everyday 87
5 Alexa’s got a Hunch: The human decisions behind
programming emotion-sensing and caregiving into digital
assistants 89
Jenny Kennedy and Yolande Strengers
6 Framing fashion: Human-machine learning and the
Amazon Echo Look 102
Heather A. Horst and Sheba Mohammid
7 Cofee with the algorithm: Imaginaries, maintenance and
care in the everyday life of a news-ranking algorithm 114
Jakob Svensson
8 Everyday AI at work: Self-tracking and automated
communication for smart work 126
Stine Lomborg
9 Exploring ADM in clinical decision-making: Healthcare
experts encountering digital automation 140
Magnus Bergquist and Bertil Rolandsson
PART III
Experimenting with automation in society 155
10 Hate it? Automate it!: Thinking and doing robotic process
automation and beyond 157
Martin Berg
11 Smart thermostats and the algorithmic control of thermal
comfort 171
Julia Velkova, Dick Magnusson and Harald Rohracher
12 Prisoners training AI: Ghosts, humans and values in data labour 184
Tuukka Lehtiniemi and Minna Ruckenstein
13 Investigating ADM in shared mobility: A design
ethnographic approach 197
Vaike Fors, Meike Brodersen, Kaspar Raats, Sarah Pink and
Rachel Charlotte Smith
Contents vii
14 Ad accountability online: A methodological approach 213
Mark Andrejevic, Robbie Fordyce, Luzhou Li and Verity Trott
in collaboration with Dan Angus and Xue Ying (Jane) Tan
Index 226
FIGURES
1.1 The automated state administration, 1956, TCO-Tidningen/Neue
Rhein-Zeitung 28
1.2 Self-regulating automation, 1957, TCO-Tidningen 28
1.3 Automation at work, 1959, TCO-Tidningen 29
1.4 The electrons march into the modern ofces, 1954,
Morgon-Tidningen 30
1.5 Leisure time and automation, 1957, Dagens Nyheter 31
1.6 Leisure time and automation, 1957, Dagens Nyheter 32
1.7 ‘Refreshments may be taken during work’ and ‘There is no
agreement on what automation really is, but still its efect is felt
every day’ 33
1.8 Female automation operators, 1961, Dagens Nyheter 34
1.9 ‘Computers refect the society they serve’, 1972, Arbetet 35
1.10 ‘No matter how isolated you are, the computer keeps track of you’ 36
1.11 ‘What does he know about me?’, 1970, Göteborgs Handels- &
Sjöfartstidning 37
1.12 ‘Control the databases’, © Ewert Karlsson (EWK)/
Bildupphovsrätt 2021, 1972, Aftonbladet 38
1.13 We are disappearing in the agency’s computer, by Lars Melander,
1980, in Dagens Nyheter 39
1.14 Simplifed tax declaration threatens our integrity, 1985,
Göteborgs-Posten 40
1.15 ‘Like the spirit in Aladdin’s lamp, the character of computer
technology is determined by the one who tames it’ 41
13.1 The ‘frst mile and last mile challenge’ refers to access and
service quality at the outset of users’ journeys 199
Figures ix
13.2 AHA II has developed a design ethnographic urban living lab
approach to exploring future mobilities together with citizens in
two residential areas in Gothenburg and Helsingborg in Sweden 200
13.3 One of our Urban Living Labs in the AHA II project, Bergum
Gunnilse, a peri-urban area outside of Gothenburg 201
13.4 Map drawings from a workshop with Felix, Jonas and Olaf,
whose children play in the same football team 206
13.5 Idea collection and themes from workshop with Lina, Yvonne
and Elsa 207