Description: Smart homes are here--domestic spaces bristling with networked technologies that appear to enhance work, entertainment, logistics, health, and security. But these technologies may also extract a cost in attention, money, and privacy. In Threshold, communication and technology expert Heather Suzanne Woods applies rhetorical theory to answer the urgent question of how swiftly proliferating smart homes alter those who inhabit them. Building on research into smart homes in the United States, Woods recounts how smart homes arose and predicts the trajectory of their future form. She pulls back the curtain on the technology, probes who is in control, and questions whether a home can be too smart. Woods suggests a dynamic cultural framework for understanding smart homes that takes into account sociotechnical variables through which smart homes shape human life. Woods's framework reveals how smart homes both reflect social norms about technology as well as whet consumer appetites. Written for homeowners, policymakers, technology enthusiasts, and scholars, Threshold interweaves critical analysis with matter-of-fact graphics that map relationships between digital tools and social life.
Brief description: Heather Suzanne Woods is associate professor of media and communication at Kansas State University. She is coauthor of Make America Meme Again: The Rhetoric of the Alt-Right. Her peer-reviewed scholarship has appeared in Cultural Studies, Critical Studies in Media Communication, and Feminist Media Studies.