Something that popped out to me during Toisha’s presentation was the section that they did on their vacuum robot. I personally do not have a vacuum robot of my own but I do have friends that post their vacuum robots or “pets” on Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook all the time. This really touches a lot on the anthropomorphic relationship with technologies that Toisha was talking about. In a world where there is online dating online classes robot wives and vacuum pads it is very easy to give a little bit of a human aspect to these nonhuman objects
Many times when we deal with Customer Service whether it’s over the phone or through an online chat although we may not realize it we are usually dealing with a robot. The robot however tends to have a human voice to make it more comfortable for the user. Toisha talked about how they even went as far as naming their vacuum Oreo. This isn’t an uncommon thing to hear of nowadays especially during a time of crisis like this.
During a time of crisis and pandemic such as the one that we are experiencing right now people are suffering in many different ways. Some people are physically suffering directly from the virus itself and others perhaps indirectly. Those of us who are introverts may still be okay with all that social distancing is: not having face-to-face interactions with, not talking to people on a daily basis, doing practically everything remotely, etc. Those who are extroverts may be experiencing a different type of discomfort. For extroverts it is very important for them for their mental well-being to have physical interactions with others, to talk face-to-face with others and just to be generally social. This is where anthropomorphic relationships can develop to ease a little bit of this social discomfort. In their article, Jodi Forlizzi and Carl DiSalvo touch on this topic. They don't specifically connect anthropomorphic relationships to the current social distancing given that social distancing and quarantine are current happenings right now, but they do touch on how different families have given a human quality to their “pet” robot vacuums. In one of the families, they pointed out that one of the members would say “ “excuse me” to the vacuum if she
bumped into it when walking through the house.” They referred to this non-human, non-gendered robot as she!!! In starting to anthropomorphize non-human products like Roombas, it can allow people to feel like they’re still having that human contact they are used to on a day to day and can help them feel less lonely.
Resources:
Forlizzi, Jodi, and Carl DiSalvo. "Service robots in the domestic environment: a study of the roomba vacuum in the home." Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/SIGART conference on Human-robot interaction. 2006.