More-than-human practices of making and unmaking the smart home: A socioemotional investigation

This article examines the complex and dynamic practices in the smart home and how these practices are socially and emotionally engaged in daily encounters with different human and non-human actors, drawing on a 14-month autoethnography. Based on the investigation of my own experiences of setting up, using and getting rid of smart home technologies, this article develops a more-than-human understanding of the time-space of home. It concentrates on the significant role of the dynamic human-technology assemblage in the process of making and unmaking smart home and the social and emotional negotiations between the operation of smart home technologies, the doings of household relationship, and the management of the physical, virtual, and imaginative home. These findings may open new dialogues on the dynamic spatiotemporalities of the digital mundane. Ultimately, this research suggests future studies to develop a more embodied and emotional way and take the social and material links and transactions between home and the broader digital world to unravel how digital technologies are normalised and integrated into our day-to-day experiences.