New Technologies: Lit Review

I am working with Nadia Hisheh and Alex Turnbull in New Technologies, and our lit review is called “Technologies: a social perspective – 
Technology adoption in the past, present and future”. I wrote about domestic technologies becoming home essentials, the positives and negatives these now-called “appliances” add to our lives.

You can read my section below, or download the complete lit review here: New Technologies Lit Review.pdf

Domestic technologies, are they as convenient as we think?

Domestic technologies – more widely known as domestic appliances – started as machines brought in to fill the void left by the diminishing servant in the early 1900s. A housewife could manage a vacuum cleaner more efficiently than the unreliable servant with a dustpan on their hands and knees. Domestic technologies that have become home essentials in the 20th century include heating and cooling, freezers and refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and microwave ovens.

Domestic appliances pride themselves on the ideology of efficiency in a fast-paced life where ‘time is money’. Cieraad (2002) suggests appliances help towards the “efficient organisation of housework with less effort and more success”, with results of comfort, cleanliness and convenience.

But do appliances which help towards the efficiency of housework improve our quality of life or save us time in “activities that are lower-value uses of time [compared to] leisure” (Eom et al. 2005)? A user has to learn how to use the appliance, it is not just a matter of pressing the ‘on’ button and it doing the rest. Domestic appliances can be classified as non-responsive devices (Akrich 1992). Washing machines need clothes to be separated into different fabrics and colours, and the correct setting on the machine has to be chosen. A washing powder or concentrate has to be bought from the supermarket for each load of washing, and chosen for what that product will do (eg. soften fabric, hold colours, and so on). A dishwasher has to be loaded to the manufacturers guidelines to assure the dishes are not broken. And you cannot cook in an oven without knowing how long the food should be in there, as well as the temperature it should be set to.

As Silva (2000) wrote, “Microwave cooking does not free the cook”. Using a cooking appliance still involves checking and assessing of the food while it is in use, and the success of using these appliances comes down to the knowledge of the user.

The convenience of using appliances does not only rely on the user, but the architecture that surrounds it (Frederick 1928), with kitchens having undergone the most substantial changes over the 20th century to accommodate these new technologies. When the freezer was introduced in the 1970s, they were too large and bulky to be present in the kitchen, and instead were kept in the garage for bulk food storage. By the mid-1990s, kitchens were being built around the appliances, which had begun to steer away from the typical whitegoods look by introducing a range of colours and styles (Southerton 2000). Dishwashers and ovens were built to not exceed the height of a 600mm benchtop to fit conveniently into existing kitchens.

When looking at the convenience of domestic technologies, the energy consumption should be taken into account. For example, fridges and freezers currently account for 26% of all energy used on domestic appliances in the home, following heating and lighting (Shove 2003). This is before looking at water consumption of washing machines and dishwashers. If these appliances are not really saving time or money, then why do users choose these machines to do tasks they are capable of?

Domestic technologies have created an expected ‘normality’, to create a situation where life would be difficult to adjust to without them. Is the energy use environmentally unsustainable because of our social ‘norms’ created from our daily routines? As an example of the resources needed for a freezer, Shove et al. (2000) explain: “as well as depending on a reliable electricity supply, and accommodating kitchen designs, freezers presuppose a network of manufacturers, frozen-food producers, global transport systems and agricultural practices”.

Energy efficiency ratings for appliances have now been made mandatory in some countries such as the UK (DECADE 1995, 1997; cited by Shove et al. 2000), however this does not necessarily mean users will replace older appliances with the newer energy efficient models. In current society, entertainment technology is updated more frequently in the family home than domestic appliances. This could be explained by the fact that appliances work on a one-to-one interaction, while entertainment technologies work on a one-to-many interaction. One-to-many means that both users (sending and receiving) need current technology to be able to interact with each other. Fridges and microwaves do not depend on this in the same way a computer does. Any technology with an outside source depends on being new.

‘Appliances’ are seen as machinery to do a task. If the machine does that task adequately, then is there a need to get a new one? Usually not until it breaks. This relates to priorities in family budgets. Users are more likely to budget their money towards the maintenance of the family computer before the washing machine, which could be explained by the functional versus emotional needs in a family home (Baillie et al. 2007). Entertainment technologies are becoming increasingly dominant in the family home, bringing new experiences, memories and meanings which are replacing the experiences domestic technologies brought into the home when they were new.