"Messenger" Reappearance: The Medium Role And Domestic Embedded Interactions Of Smart Speakers

The rise of artificial intelligence technology has made the "interconnection of all things" the dominant logic of the current era.With the widespread application of natural language processing(NLP)and natural language generation(NLG)in various fields,the mode and form of communication have also undergone certain innovations.The new media technology logic will open up a different kind of media practice,and also bring more possibilities in the social action field.In many domestic scenarios,the interaction with smart speakers has become a part of daily life,and the relationship between human and machine is deeply interwoven in these situations.From the perspective of Kramer’s media theory,this study explores how the smart speaker plays its material role in the household daily life,reveals the unique meaning of the new technological object represented by the smart speaker in the domestic life scenario,and explains the Mediality of the smart speaker from three levels: space,sound and relationship.The smart speaker is originally a heteronomous medium messenger subject to human beings.At the same time,it is a machine subject with increasingly sophisticated learning ability and powerful information processing ability.Its material characteristics and medium attributes have created many possibilities beyond the designer’s original imagination while realizing its functional intention.Machines no longer play the role of assisting human communication,but incarnate as new objects of communication other than human beings.They become the subject of communication,breaking the previous "anthropocentric" credo of communication academics.This study re-examines the interaction between humans and machines,the perception and interpretation of the spatio-temporal relationship,removes machines from cognitive limitations of communication channels and means.This study also emphasizes the material role of smart speaker in shaping the domestic life scenarios and cultural practices,focuses on the connection between technological products and human beings.Finally,this study explores how family members view the relationship with smart speakers,and analyzes the reasons for these phenomena.