Automation, wellbeing and Digital Voice Assistants: Older people and Google devices

Abstract

Digital Voice Assistants (DVAs) like Google Home provide automated news, media and other content directly into the home. In this article, we outline how Google Home’s content delivery can support the wellbeing and independence of older people. We argue that automated media provided by DVAs enrols older people in a dialectic relationship with the automated content and feminised conversation they deliver, uniquely performed within people’s own everyday life circumstances. We demonstrate this by drawing on ethnographic insights generated during a trial of smart home technologies with older Australian households who are ‘ageing in place’ in regional New South Wales. For most participants, the trial was their first encounter with DVAs and the modes of media and content delivery including for music, news, weather, trivia, jokes, facts and images. While DVAs bring new experiences via content, communication and companionship, they are also subverted, ignored or transformed as people improvise to make them ‘fit’ within their homes and lives. These dynamics underpin how DVAs, automated content delivery and user’s interactions can support people’s sense of wellness and their independent daily practices at home.