On robotic enactments of older and younger people: functions, futures, imaginaries

Abstract In this paper, we explore some of the assumptions about human users that underpin the promotion of robotics. In particular, we compare representations of younger and older persons that are tacitly enacted in websites devoted to promoting the use of social robots. The comparison serves to throw into relief the respective assumptions about these two user groups and to illuminate the variety of discourses, representations and imaginaries that resource those assumptions. Using snowballing techniques, we examine a sample of websites devoted to promoting social robots or to presenting consumer reviews of respective strengths and weaknesses of different social robots for particular age groups. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, we subject these data to a thematic analysis in order to critically illuminate: the assumed futures in which these robots will function; the model of older and younger generations and their ostensible needs; and the broader imaginaries of society and economy which inform the interactions between robots and people. We note that these promotional accounts tend to present both highly specific and rather vague articulations of the future; stereotype older and younger people and oversimplify their needs; and deploy imaginaries in which a limited version of the economy predominates. We conclude with some thoughts on how the ethos of robotic design might be adapted to address more complex inter-generational relations and social and material conditions.