Locality of the Cyborg: A Feminist Reading of Domestic Smart Technology Networks

Anna Mladentseva [LinkedIn]

An increasing number of U.S. and U.K households are becoming integrated with smart home technology networks; creating automated, decentralised pathways for media and information exchange. This has also engendered local pockets of feminist resistance, where the emancipation of a fixed (often hierarchical) female identity becomes inextricably linked with reconceptualising the perceived stubbornness of matter. Previous research on domestic telematics has viewed this technological assistance through a phenomenological lens, foregrounding routine and place-making as a constellation of repeated habits. This transcendentalism leaves little room for consideration of communication infrastructure. The reductionist arrogance of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory also disavows ‘engineered’ computer networks for their supposed fixed and final state. By studying contemporary accounts of smart homes as extracted from online video documentation, we can finally illuminate a new, feminist role of these networks. This paper suggests the need to reverse the semiotic turn in order to accommodate a new materialist framework. Wi-Fi routers, the fused spur and smart plugs become actants in an indeterminate, yet local, ecosystem that defines a fluid role for the woman. This paves the way for a new generation of an interface, acting as a biological substrate for the increasingly porous female body: the ‘cyborg’ of Donna Haraway.    

Constant Nieuwenhuys’ ‘Erotic Space’ (1971) [fig. 1] is an oil painting depicting a female nude in a grey interior space, while her abstracted, flaccid body has a threefold wire system fastening her to a wall plug. The vignette conjures up an image of a woman integrated into the circuited ecosystem of a hypothetical home, though it is deeply unsettling. A red liquid reservoir stretches on the floor beside her buttocks, while a cryptic, dark figure behind her overlooks a faintly sketched-out form with a prominent phallus. The woman appears to be defeated in this semantic infrastructure, consisting of both gendered actors and elements of electrical technology. Today, over a quarter of homes in the United States are penetrated by smart home technology, including remote-control devices that form part of a wider intelligent home network (Blumtritt 2020). The U.S. has the highest smart technology infiltration rate, providing us with a contemporary context in which we can explore the historical downfalls and future possibilities of the woman inside information technology and communication networks. The first historical clues for the development of domestic telematics can be traced back to broadcast media –– many of them, including the ‘Home Shopping Club’, adhering to a female mass audience. These narratives often presented unfavourable environments for female subjectivity. To obtain a critical stance, media theorists Sarah Pink and Kerstin Leder Mackley argued for a non-media-centric approach (2013). However, I argue for the potential of infrastructure in non-media-centrism and semantic emancipation, especially in its formulations of locality; which will prove to be an innovative strategy for challenging the traditional, domestic role of the woman. Our case study will be based on U.S. and U.K. smart technology video accounts from the online repository YouTube, including a brief overview of how wireless networks interact with domestic, physical infrastructures. We will observe the automated performance of integrated smart networks, and construct a diagram illuminating its decentralising tendencies that engender indeterminate and transformative nodes. However, couching these findings into the existing non-media-centrism will prove to be counter-productive, as its transcendentalism and phenomenology overlooks non-human actors. While Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory excludes technical articulations of infrastructures such as ours for their supposed fixed and final state. I propose to inject these parameters with feminist conceptions of new materialism, as extracted from the feminist essays of Donna Haraway. I hope to convince that embracing the locality of technological assistance can harbour an emancipated and feminist cyborg, instead of being a tool that further reinforces unfavourable roles.

Locality as Singularity: Historicising Domestic Telematics

The screen posited itself as the location wherein the wide net of semantics converges with female subjectivity; particularly in the context of 1950s U.S. housewives. Home television affairs therefore became questions of gendered identities, fixated in an unfavourable subject position under language. It was equally responsible for meaning production, which became opaque in imagery. Attributing images to a textual determination turned the act of spectatorship into a passive, yet attentive reading of a singular text (Morley and Silverstone 1990:44). For the housewife, who became the ‘economic motor’ of television broadcasting, this meant a conditioning to certain conservative roles, often under a patriarchal mentality (Morley 1995:315). The possibilities of broadcasting, allowing multiple families to concurrently access the same programmes, turns into a universalist gesture. This net of semantics, supported by the infrastructure of cinematic narrative, was plotted with symbolic mechanisms that were pre-digested by its producers (1995:297). This leaves little space for heterogeneity in relation to the roles performed by women. This theoretical position has been described as the hypodermic model, as the penetrating influence of media felt somewhat corporeal (1995:294). The injection of this homogenous, semantic substance made each gender behave in a certain pre-programmed manner.

The hypodermic model was eventually overturned by a non-media-centric approach, as its very criticism of singularity turned into an unproductive surrender. It overlooked the other side of media which acted as a ‘constant background flow of representations’ that weren’t always attentively read (Morley and Silverstone 1990:44). The non-media-centric approach purposely disavows its consumption through form and syntax. In fact, the anthropologist David Morley studied these gendered viewing patterns, revealing that women are more likely to view television programmes whilst doing other ‘useful’ activities like sewing or ironing (1995:317). This fostered a more phenomenological model, in which sensory interaction with media is often transcended into immaterial outcomes such as routine; overshadowing the determinacy of consumption. This model also brings out the ‘interdiscursive space’ within which the subject operates; in place of a fixed position within a single textual narrative (1995:301). Interdiscursivity implies a plurality of texts, thus never fixing a symbol into a specific, local context. As a result, non-media-centrism strictly ruled out any potential of locality, for it pertains to the homogenous, singular text.

But what if the determinacy of consumption can take on a new form that doesn’t pin the woman into a singular text? Housewives multitasking while watching television not only bursts the hypodermic influence of media, but also reveals a hesitation on the behalf of women during their acts of consumption (1995:317). There is a feeling of guilt associated with taking pleasure in watching television, especially in the presence of other family members. Morley points out that a number of housewives get up on Saturday morning before everyone else to catch up on their ‘special’ programmes (ibid). There needs to be an exploration on the possibilities of an opaque consumption pattern, in the context of a more interactive environment presented by The Home Shopping Club (HSC).

 By 1987, the Home Shopping Club has overtaken the industry of teleshopping, broadcast in sixty million homes in the U.S. (Desmond 1989:340). It even had its own counterpart in the U.K. on BSkyB (Morley 1995:311). It is a show that runs throughout day and night, offering goods ranging from jewellery to Chinese pottery at a heavily discounted price. The fast pace and live inventory showing the quantity of items sold urges the audience to dial and buy the item as quickly as possible before it sells out. Successful orders require fast reflexes and the ability to swiftly dial through a touch tone phone: a preferred model over the much slower rotary phone. In this case, the woman is, again, fixed; albeit to her chair as she attentively tries to track down a discounted microwave. Consumption, in place of being obscured, occupies a pivotal role in entertainment.

 The HSC’s interactive experience based on opaque consumption inaugurated a cybernetic infrastructure of media and information exchange, despite the fixed locality of the woman. Cybernetics use feedback-controlled systems where a stimulus drives an outcome in the framework of a given constraint (Haraway 2007:303). For example, five-hundred necklaces define the constraint of the system, which is then altered by purchases; in turn displaying the new system outcome on the inventory screen. This automation is heightened with the introduction of Miss Tootie –– the ‘automatic, computerized order-taking service’ (Desmond 1989:342). Instead of having to call an operator to place an order, members can dial into the ‘communications recombinatrix’ –– an amalgamation of command and information exchange that now has taken a new, updated form in smart technology (1989:340).

Locality as Indeterminate: Case Study and its Methodology

Before delving into the findings of our case study, there ought to be several remarks on how the chosen methodology posits itself in relation to non-media-centrism, especially in the writings of Pink and Mackley. We aim to export their video methodology onto the behaviour of smart technology, as well as create a diagram of its infrastructure in place of sensorial embodiments. Pink and Mackley were exponents of the ‘prism of the sensory home’, advocating for its potential in observing domestic media and foregrounding otherwise unspoken behaviours that rearrange its consumption (2012:87). Video ethnographies access these sensorial points, for they have the ability to capture textures, sound and time. When revisiting these video tours, one of their subjects, Rhodes, made comments on the decorative changes that have taken place since the recording (2012:89). Time reveals itself as cumulative and evolving, subjecting objects to change. With technology, this temporality is embedded into the routine of switching media devices on or off (Pink and Mackley 2013:679). Patterns of media consumption revealed themselves not in the interactive entertainment of the HSC, but through routine. Unlike Pink and Mackley, we will not be conducting private video tours. Instead, we will use the public video repository: YouTube. So far, this phenomenological methodology only concerned human agents. Even though there was a consideration of the wider landscape of sensorial plurality that fractured a simply visual interaction with media into routine, technological processes and their timelines have been overlooked. Our observations will find the automated and pre-programmed yet decentralised and transformative way that individuals interact with smart technology. In turn, calling into question as to how this can happen through situated, fixed nodes in a local, domestic network.

One of the smart systems set up by the YouTube user Amanda Woolsey can be referred to as post-cybernetic, for it consists of media devices that increase automation, distancing the user from physical interaction (2016). The network is made up of hardware devices including Amazon Echo Dot (a digital assistance speaker operated through voice control), a security camera by Google Nest and Lifx smart bulbs. These count as media devices in that they operate through communicating information in mass quantities, often fetched online via the world wide web and its access to corporate (Amazon or Google) cloud networks (Woolsey 2016). Amazon Echo Dot refers to these off-site resources when prompted with a question, normally through a voice command that starts with the wake word: ‘Alexa’. The addition of the prefix ‘post’ in relation to Woolsey’s system illustrates a progressive departure from the aforementioned feedback-controlled systems employed by the Home Shopping Club. The feedback to which the smart systems reacts is less physical. Instead of a purchase, the system independently performs checks for the ‘Alexa’ wake word and other variables, such as time, since the Lifx bulbs are set to function only in the evening. There is less physical involvement on the behalf of the consumer, as the housewife no longer has to carefully follow the happenings of the HSC and skilfully snatch discounted objects before they sell out. The smart network’s penetrative integration into the domestic space allows it to be constantly on ‘stand-by’. Its far-field voice recognition technology and advanced RAM (Random Access Memory) processing capacities allow it to operate endlessly and interact with its consumers remotely (ibid). This level of integration diminishes  the relevance of the binary switch, as well as the interaction with media through routine.

Woolsey’s smart ecosystem extracts some of its functionalities from the applet-providing freeware IFTTT (If This Then That), where routines pre-programmed by an online community can be exported onto one’s own domestic network (ibid). These routines are called ‘applets’, and IFTTT makes them accessible to a mass audience through an online database. They consist of conditional statements, which are then mapped onto smart devices, allowing them to react to stimuli in a pre-programmed way. This tool can also be viewed as a departure from more basic forms of feedback-control, and into the possibilities of post-cybernetics. It makes your devices compatible, allowing them to communicate between each other without your own input. Woolsey utilises this to trigger a red-light strobing sequence in her installed Lifx smart bulbs when her Nest camera detects an intruder. The imported applet feeds the Lifx bulbs any movement detected on the Nest camera while the owner is marked as ‘away’, treating it as media that is communicated over a network (ibid). Routine is, again, dissolved into the air of domesticated life; while the variety of media that is able to be digested through communication technology is expanded.

Having explored how domestic smart networks perform, we ought to turn to its technical infrastructure with the assistance of another YouTube video by TechFlow in order to introduce the concept of decentralisation that views actors as fluid, transformative nodes. In the video, the team converts a manually controlled garden light system into a remote-controlled system; essentially, switching out a timer clock with a fused spur, so that it is safely compatible with a smart plug. A smart plug has Wi-Fi capabilities, allowing it to extend the system out into the arena of remote control through the Alexa app. This is another sign that challenges historically defined locations (such as the television screen) of media, widening it to information exchange. You can order your Amazon Echo to switch your garden lights on through a voice command, or even automatically whenever your outdoor security cameras recognise a visitor. Virtually any domestic system that operates through control can be turned into smart technology, quantifying intangible energy and pixelized surveillance into the wider network of mass information exchange. Figure 2 shows precisely how the use of a smart plug can mobilise existing infrastructures into remote control. This facilitates decentralization, in which human and non-human actors are strategically positioned into nodes. As the number of actors in the ecosystem increases, previously unidirectional relations turn into having complex cardinalities, as marked by the crow’s foot notation. For example, at the level of interaction, the Alexa app facilitates concurrency where multiple users can operate the same technology through multiple devices. This plurality of access mimics fluid, social interactions previously inconceivable to such linear and engineered systems. Yet, these nodes are still embedded into a certain locality –– an updated, technologically etched notion of domesticity that does not behave through a limiting singularity. The medium on which all smart technology is built is indeed Wi-Fi –– a type of wireless local area network. The typology is inevitably built on a number of strategic localities, but these act as mediators to relational transformations, making them far from fixed and stable.

Problematising Existing Scholarship in Relation to Locality

The non-media-centric approach ought to consider infrastructure as a mode of departing from the singularity and domination of media content; first by reconsidering its notions of locality, as both the introduction of nodes and the embeddedness of smart technology into wireless local networks are etched with indeterminacy. According to Pink and Mackley, their definition of ‘place’, including the ‘home’, departs from locality or occupation of an otherwise vacant space (2013:683). This assumption is part of a bigger aim to orient domestic place-making into a ‘constellation of processes’, otherwise buried under orthodox attention to media content (Massey quoted in Pink and Mackley 2013:683). Experience of phenomena through the senses and routine are heightened examples of these processes, for they are immaterial and temporal. This phenomenological approach values what can transcend beyond its material constrictions, and into the perceptive, sensing individual. This reverses the order in which place is made –– starting not from a determined locality, but through repeated habits that interweave into a density of meaning (2013:680). This is unproductive in the case of smart technology, as our findings reveal a rather disembodied, automated mechanism. There is little opportunity for routine and transcendence when recipes for behaviour are conveniently provided by IFTTT. However, these parameters should not be seen as a regression back to the hypodermic model; where the woman, fixed to the locality of her domestic couch, passively consumes the patriarchal narrative that revolves around her in the form of media. It is an opportunity to accommodate a reshuffling of locality that matches the aim of non-media-centrism in conceptualising the domestic space as indeterminate, malleable and strategic. We ought to expand the somewhat anthropocentric stance of non-media-centrism, so that we not only situate media, but let its network situate us.

Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory also notes a certain prejudice against technical networks such as ours, for its fixed and final properties are dictated by a single, male individual –– the engineer. Actor-network theory is a relativist model for looking at instances of infrastructure, which does not discriminate against non-human actors. It is also a reductionist theory, in that it prioritises associations and connections between two elements (Latour 1996:372). A fixed, engineered identity would be detrimental for the actors in the network, for they would have to follow predetermined routes; similar, in a way, to the set behaviours imposed by the singular text of the hypodermic model (1996:369). This bias will make the model a useless tool for investigating already fixed networks. However, Latour wrongly attributes this compulsory nature to computer networks; possibly because back in 1996, smart technology has not yet emerged into the mass market of domestic telematics (ibid). For Latour, the introduction of multiple actors, from gas pipes to Alaskan reindeer, is meant to fracture the belief of a single actor who traces a network (1996:371). As this actor’s –– a historically male individual –– position in a network often carries with it attempts to extend his power and allies (1996:373). However, smart networks challenge this through its decentralising capacities that introduce a plurality of actors through devices, interfaces and users. This means that technologically sound networks should be equally considered as being part of actor-network theory.

Actor-network theory sets up some parameters that could be beneficial in the strategy of locality –– including the obsoleteness of a concept of agency framed in opposition to structure, as well as traditional local/global proxemics. Disavowing individual agency is fairly radical –– how can the housewife be liberated, if she lacks agency inside her own domestic infrastructure? This is when we turn back to our findings, in which the strategy of actors relies on a kind of situational positioning at a local level. Reductionist tendencies of actor-network theory favour connections over individual agency that can often be overpowering, male and patriarchal. It is therefore ineffective to transpose this problematic agency into empowering the ‘other’, as the master actor’s agency would nonetheless be objectively ‘longer or more intensely connected’ (1996:371). Developing a strategy that merely resists structure is no less universalising that the structure itself; as the potential lies in having no a priori laws, or structure, to begin with (ibid). Positioning an actor in the role of a node allows them to perform their own ‘network tracing activity’, turning seemingly distant localities into ‘provisionally commensurable connections’ (1996:370;378). This self-sufficiency is present in smart home networks, where automation and integration reach high levels of impact and self-control. Actor-network theory argues for disoriented proxemics, where a highly connected ‘global entity […] nevertheless remains continuously local’ (1996:372). Distance is therefore overlooked in favour of connectivity, which in our case reaches out to the global internet, corporate cloud networks and community IFTTT services, all with the help of a wireless local network. Forging these plural connections, while recording the movement of this process into an indeterminate network, becomes inextricably entangled with feminist endeavours; in its potential to diversify the category of the actor into the more diverse actant (1996:373).

Locality in Physical Infrastructures

The existing composition of the built environment within which smart home networks operate also initiates a debate on the pairing of Latour’s actor-network theory and locality. The interplay between Wi-Fi infrastructure and the physical elements surrounding a domestic environment reveals a stubbornness of materials.  The nature of propagation complicates the connectivity presented by Wi-Fi, as modern buildings often employ aluminium cladding and metallic-coated windows which attenuate the UHF (Ultra High Frequency) radio waves used in wireless communication (Tolstrup 2015:128). However, this substantial penetration loss of 20-50dB does not necessarily illustrate the determinism of technical infrastructures, which may act as a disruption to the functioning of automated commands relying on immaculate wireless communication (2015:112). Smart home devices communicate through either Wi-Fi or cellular data, both of which are physically similar as they use UHF radio waves. While the point of access for Wi-Fi is normally the router, which is placed locally within one’s home, cellular data relies on larger macro-structures consisting of base stations. However, even cellular data is now evolving towards localised solutions, such as the femtocell (2015:471). This miniature cellular base station acts in a similar way to a Wi-Fi router, as it doesn’t rely on external, existing infrastructures for connectivity. Extension only occurs at a domestic level in the form of repeaters. This also suggests that any insulation properties provided by domestic infrastructure acts as an advantage rather than an obstruction, giving rise to a demand in ‘WLAN-proof windows’ that keep the internal network secure from external tampering (2015:128). Actor-network theory’s disorienting proxemics are also kept intact, as the line-of-sight propagation feature present in radio waves suggests that obstruction, rather than distance, undermines communication. Clearly, locality holds potential not only in formulations of the emancipated housewife, but also in reconceptualising the ‘determinism’ of technical infrastructures; which increasingly align with innovative solutions in telecommunications, locality and disorientating proxemics.

Locality as Strategy: A New Materialist Framework

New materialism offers a radical re-appraisal of matter, after it has been exhausted by phenomenology and transcendentalism by being unfairly viewed as ‘naively representational or naturalistic’ (Coole and Frost 2010:3). For Coole and Frost, this reconsideration is vital, as our bodies become increasingly porous to inorganic mechanisms of ‘networked and programmable media’ (2010:17). The ‘semiotic turn’ of 1960s is also at fault in misconceiving matter, where production of meaning reigned over nature, nullifying everything to discourse or text (Latour 1996:374). The hypodermic model of media also allows it to hand over its singularity to the audience, restricting their access down to supplied narratives. When non-media-centrism introduced interdiscursivity, materiality was still mediated by routine (Pink and Mackley 2013:679). Not only does this present a very dwarfed perspective on the components constituting home networks, but technology no longer operates primarily through human routine. Instead, it is replaced by transformation and integration of media technology into existing domestic infrastructures. By focusing on these modes of ‘design, boundary constraints, rates of flows, systems logics’ through the components of these networks, ranging from IFTTT software to the fused spur, we have redefined the cupping of matter, and the technical capacities of networks, as essentialist (Haraway 2007:301).

The vulnerability of relativism is attributed to its omnipresent outlook that has historically been associated with the positivist tradition of science and patriarchy. As a result, situating the female is a strategy that liberates both matter and her sex; as local perspectives are detrimental to relativist omnipresence. The attempt of Latour to orient actor-network theory away from the individual, male actor who extends his power is thus somewhat undermined by its own relativism. The man simply occupies an updated stance of arrogance –– the ‘conquering gaze of nowhere’, that is equally and fully everywhere (Haraway 1988:581). Feminist situating of knowledge is therefore not an act of transcendence into routine, senses or the all-seeing eye; but an embodiment of partial perspective (1988:583). Actor-network’s theory disorienting proxemics nonetheless avow the ‘intimately personal and individualised body [to] vibrate […] with global high-tension emissions’ alongside the UHF radio waves of femtocells and Wi-Fi routers (1998:588). The function of the woman as a node within a smart technology network therefore becomes an issue of, at the same time, microelectronic and identity politics.

Donna Haraway’s formulation of the cyborg allows us to view the woman as a non-isomorphic actant who has embraced the assistance of networked technology, thus integrating herself as a node into the system of (domestic) telematics. A full circle has been made in that the woman still exists within infrastructure, albeit a technical one in place of semantic. We have managed to render obsolete the opposition of local against global, allowing ‘domestic’ telematics to assume an undetermined, but still impactful globality; as well as abandon the positioning of individual agency against social structures as a mode of resistance. We therefore have a node that is not responsible for fixing gender into a specific subjectivity. It instead allows women to utilise their position as an opportunity to resist, taking on a non-isomorphic, variable form that is codified through the transformations undertaken by integrating smart technology into the home. Resistance is facilitated through empirically small, but powerful silicone chips which the newly formed cyborg-woman utilises as her biological substrate (Haraway 2007:294). This miniaturisation allows the ‘plaiting of weak ties’, which is acknowledged by Latour as an apt strategy for resistance emerging from technology (1996:370). Instead of agency, the cyborg-woman weaves human and non-human processes to create loci of resistance against an imposing singularity. This strategy could be transposed onto contemporary debates of diversity in artificial intelligence and chatbots, who all seem to initially be assigned a female gender –– Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri (Samuel 2019). Instead of viewing the employment of a female voice as a reinforcement of the singular, patriarchal narrative of the woman, we ought to engender a cyborg –– an updated, undetermined and plural role of the woman, situated in a technological network.

Conclusion

Having transposed the unfavourable subjectivity of the woman from a semantic infrastructure into a technological one, we have opened up non-isomorphic configurations for her in the form of a cyborg. Domestic smart technology networks provide indeterminate nodes for the woman to use as a biological substrate, in the emancipated spirit of new materialism. Strategic network placement is no longer about agency and global positioning, but about a locality that creates miniaturised links of resistance for impact. Locality served as a pivotal point which helped us to reconceptualise technological infrastructures as fixed, re-injecting them back into actor-network theory. We have managed to articulate the asymmetric vulnerabilities of non-media-centrism through our findings of automated networks and their transformative nodes; updating forms of media interaction that depart beyond deterministic consumption or anthropocentric routine. Though the historical instances of domestic telematics have diabolised locality for articulating singularity, definitions of what constitute media have expanded and bled into post-cybernetic feedback-control systems; where the woman can diversify her role in tandem with the mobilisation of existing, physical infrastructures into smart networks. Further research could be made as to how this strategy translates into different contexts outside the United States and United Kingdom where smart technology infiltration rates are much lower. We need to question whether this material dependence may create more pockets of inequality, or perhaps manifest new localities outside the domestic space for cyborg-substantiation.

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