| In today’s world of ubiquitous digital media technology,smart homes are becoming increasingly popular.This new digital technology has the potential to revolutionize the way people live their daily lives and create new living spaces.Consequently,people’s understanding of the meaning of “home” is being challenged,and the practice of “home-making” is undergoing a transformation.While the market for smart home technology is expanding,little attention has been given to the socio-cultural aspects of smart homes in China,and overseas studies have not examined the relationship between smart homes and “home-making” with the rich meaning of “home”.Therefore,this study aims to develop a framework for examing digital “home-making” by using the smart home as a case study of future-oriented digital media technology.Drawing on theories of everyday life and domestication,this study examines people’s everday practice,perceptions,and affects in four dimensions: imagination,space,perception and transformation.Through online ethnography and interviews with twelve users and practitioners,this study explores how digital media technology affects people’s “home-making” and reflects on the implications of digital “home-making”.Unlike mass media technologies,smart homes are more home-oriented and more responsive to people’s need of “home-making”.Firstly,the market creates a utopian discourse around the technology,where consumers negotiate it,defining the imagination and use of the smart home.Secondly,the smart home transforms the spatiality of the home with the Internet of Things,challenging the meaning of home in terms of visibility and accessibility,and bringing with risks of privacy and control.Again,people are able to use the smart home to perform certain physical practices to perceive home,as well as to give it affective meaning.Additionally,smart homes help people identify their responsibilities and values for the family,maintain emotional relationships between family members,and establish a sense of identity,belonging,and attachment in the liminal space of memory and imagination,also demonstrating the unfinished and iterative nature of digital “home-making” practices.This study finds that the impact of the smart home on “home-making” is multifaceted and coincides with the multiple meanings of “home”: an ideology and concept,an architectural space,an emotional atmosphere and aesthetic space,and family.For contemporary Chinese,the demand to “create a home” in different geographical spaces will drive the normalization of digital home-making.Besides,in the multi-layered influence,the attributes of the home are changing,and power and control from within and without are also implicit.The smart home makes people more willing to stay “at home”,while at the same time placing them “outside home”.But at the same time,digital technologies open up more possibilities for people’s everyday practices,and digital “home-making” is a production and competition for space to survive in the digital age. |
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