Vocal infrastructuring in the smart home

Abstract

This paper explores the phenomenon and practices of making vocal home automation through an ethnographic study of the emergent relations between domestic digital voice assistants (DVAs), older users and their homes. Inspired by the concept of infrastructure in science and technology studies, and an understanding of voice from sound studies, we analyse the interrelated and emergent processes of bringing voices, users and homes into being as new DVAs are being implemented into private homes. Through this lens, we develop the empirical-analytical concept of vocal infrastructuring, which works to demystify the voice as a natural and neutral user interface. We argue that technology studies need theoretical approaches that enable joint understandings of the vocal specificities and infrastructural nature of DVA’s and propose vocal infrastructuring as a concept for tuning in on these dimensions of technology to understand the silent yet profound sonic-material, imaginary and ontological transformations that follow DVA implementation in homes and everyday domestic life.