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The origins of smart homes are to be found in intelligent, or smart, buildings which began to appear in the 1970s and 1980s and were lauded as offering the potential means of improving energy efficiency, ventilation, and the control of working environments. Smart homes can bring a range of benefits to older people and improve their quality of life. However, while the promotion of smart home initiatives may be sound, technologies could be used in ways that underpin or consolidate ageist, disablist, and oppressive service frameworks. This chapter explores the significance of device communication and specifically relates it to the needs of older people and the empowerment that it offers as well as the danger of such technologies removing choice and control from the user.

This chapter examines the interplay between technology and the home’s social and moral organization, focusing on the fact that “the home” is a highly variable cultural object, in physical, social, economic, and emotional terms. It approaches this topic from three perspectives: The image of the so-called smart home and its connection to previous images of the “home of the future”; a decentered view of the home as a sociotechnical arena, concentrating on the boundaries of the movement of technologies into and out of domestic space; and considerations of safety and danger as they relate to information technology and nurturance.

This chapter discusses emerging technologies, including wearable technologies, artificial intelligence, instant messaging and apps, smart homes and connected cars, smart wallets, and virtual reality/augmented reality. It concludes that there is a lot to explore with the technology and capabilities at hand today in the mobile world. At the same time, there is a lot in the future to be excited about as well. Within a few years, the mobile ecosystem and related technologies will transform our lives beyond recognition and usher in a new age. It will without doubt be recognized as one of the hallmark advancements that society has seen in the 21st century.

This chapter considers how media landscapes in the home have shifted over this century and examines how devices relate to each other and to householders to create dynamic and evolving media ecologies. At the turn of this century, a typical domestic media ecology comprised a cathode-ray television in the living room, perhaps connected to a videocassette recorder; a desktop computer in a home office, perhaps connected to a dial-up modem; and a landline telephone, often located in a communal area in the home. More recently, the home has become a place for high-definition “smart” televisions, intelligent multifunction set-top boxes, game consoles, digital radio, high-speed broadband, cabled and wireless home networks, mobile computing, cloud connections, online government service provision, gesture-controlled games, and much more. How and why have these technologies been appropriated? How has this ongoing appropriation reconfigured the domestic media ecology and the life that is lived within this ecology?

This chapter tracks both the processes of change as they have unfolded in the home and the implications of socio-technical change across a wide range of domestic media technologies, as they flow through the home and ripple out through home life. This chapter situates this longer global history within more recent and local contexts that initiated our research agenda. This historical account presents previous scholarship on the domestication of media technologies, as well as mapping the shifting and accumulating hardware devices, software systems, and infrastructural layers of technology shaping contemporary digital domesticity. The domestic sphere is seen not only as a significant context for technology consumption but as a significant, multifaceted site for making meaning of technologies and for postmarket innovation in technology application.

This chapter studies how technology can help keep the older generation safe and at home. If media commentary on this subject is to be believed, the Internet of Things will carry part of the load of caring for the elders. New, in-home smart systems will reduce caregiver stress through electronic surveillance, allowing doctors to get real-time insights into the health of loved ones, improving their quality of life. Indeed, teams of clinical, economic, security, and technical experts are now at work on a new form of “assisted living.” The model patient will have, in their home, passive environmental sensors, medical devices, wearable technologies, and interactive apps connected to their body and bed, floor and door frames, collecting a fast-moving stream of data. However, will these new, technologically sophisticated homes really tackle the core problems of aging and dementia? Technology by itself will not be the full solution. People have to figure out the role that old-fashioned social networks—humans checking in on humans—will play, and how technology can help augment, not replace, the role that caregivers play in maximizing quality of life for those who can no longer care for themselves. This will require a serious examination of the role of work and obligation, borne by those in middle age, and how this can fit in with the increasing responsibilities they will inevitably bear as the population ages.

The conclusion returns to the book’s key concerns and themes: the particular, the contextual, and the messiness of household media ecologies, as demonstrated through the various stages of technology appropriation, maintenance, negotiation, non-use, and displacement that have unfolded and mutated in the early years of the twenty-first century. It considers the broad range of ways in which people embrace digital media in their daily domestic lives; reflects on the ongoing changes in domestic media and communication technologies, platforms, and infrastructures; and addresses the broader implications of digital media materialities for contemporary household relations, economics, and environments.