IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023 - 20

Book Review
must and will change as women seek opportunities
in paid employment. They also point out that
" industry sales figures show that consumers of smart
home devices are more likely to be male, " suggesting
that male consumers are, in fact, looking for a
wife in the same way as the man Syfers described in
1971. This persistent gender stereotyping of the task
home robotic devices perform is the focus of much
of Strengers and Kennedy's concern.
Strengers, an Associate Professor of Digital
Technology at Monash University, and Kennedy,
a postdoc at RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC,
Australia, argue that if we proceed down the current
path of making our digital assistants, fembots,
gynoids, and voice-activated devices look, sound,
and/or behave like simulacra of women, we risk
reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes in ways
that could rebound on real women. They seem
particularly concerned about this in the context
of sexbots, pointing out that these devices have no
way of giving consent to whatever they are asked
or ordered to do. The authors are concerned that
behaviors encouraged by or learned from interactions
with feminized robots will become the norm
in those with real human women. Even movie and
television portrayals of smart wives are suspect, the
authors write: " ... these depictions affect how we
treat our devices, robots and AI, which in turn are
reflected back in how we treat people in general-
and women in particular. "
Like much of the reasoning in this book, this
concern seems conceptually exaggerated. There
is a great deal of speculation in The Smart Wife
about what might happen, and very little substance
on how we might measure the effect of what has
actually happened or is happening now. Chapter 4
on " Alexa " is almost entirely speculative. Whether
we are discussing how homeowners interact with
their vacuum cleaners and security systems, supervisors
with their digital assistants, or how sexbot
users instruct their electronic partners, it is unclear
from Strengers's and Kennedy's account whether
we have enough reliable baseline data, and algorithms
for interpreting it, to state with confidence
that human interactions are being negatively influenced
by feminized smart devices. Strengers and
Kennedy's " Note on Methodology " seems a little
thin on historical data from before 2000, though
they are making claims about changes appearing
over time. Many of us recall verbally abusing our
20
household equipment even when it was purely
electromechanical, with no ability to talk back;
my late father-in-law, a millwright, was certain
that all machinery worked better when profanely
harangued, the more colorfully the better. The
proposition that there is something sinister in this
kind of impatience with mechanisms seems to me
farfetched and, so far as our data currently indicates,
purely conjectural. There is also nothing
new in rudeness to subordinates generally, including
those of the same sex.
On the same point, the book does not offer any
contrast between feminized home and office robots
and the kind that have for decades been making
automobiles and other industrial products. I could
not find in The Smart Wife any mention of industrial
robots that compares their situation as " smart workers, "
or perhaps " smart tools " like vacuum cleaners,
with those of, say, smart vibrators or sexbots. Can we
say that it is possible to exploit a robot that produces
orgasm but not one that produces a car? Does the
capability for speech make a difference in this context?
If industrial robots spoke in feminized voices,
would that alter our relationship with them? Are we
at risk of abusing human auto workers if we swear
at their robotic counterparts? Strengers and Kennedy
do not raise questions of this kind.
Beyond reInforcIng what the authors see as dangerous
gender stereotypes, the other main concern
in The Smart Wife is that smart home technology can
be used for nefarious purposes, or that it can go haywire
in unexpectedly risky ways. For these claims,
there is solid evidence from recent history. Identity
theft, invasions of privacy, stalking, digital larceny,
virtual assistants ordering unwanted goods, credit
card theft, and other online dangers can be enabled
and/or enhanced by smart home technologies.
Alexa and similar systems do our bidding by serving
as in-home listening devices that can be hacked
like any other online system, including the ones in
our cars and children's nurseries. Strengers and Kennedy
are, of course, not the only scholars and commentators
who have pointed out the risky elements
in these smart home and office technologies, and
they quote and cite their predecessors in the rising
chorus of concern, including Donna Haraway, Meredith
Broussard, Davin Heckman, Paul Dourish, Genevieve
Bell, David Gunkel, and Shoshanna Zuboff. All
of these critics of the " smart technologies " in our
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023

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