Presentation at BSA Environment and Health Conference, Cardiff, 27th October 2017

1. Smart Living: Implications for
health and wellbeing
Fiona Shirani
On behalf of the FLEXIS social science team – Karen Henwood, Chris
Groves, Erin Roberts and Nick Pidgeon

2. What is smart living?
• Strengers (2013:1) “In its broadest sense, ‘smart’
represents an ultimate desired state across all aspects of
contemporary life. It encapsulates ideals of efficiency,
security and utilitarian control in a technologically
mediated and enabled environment. Further, it is
employed by its proponents as a means of imagining and
realising social and technological progress, while
simultaneously solving a range of social and
environmental problems.”
• Wellbeing of Future Generations
Technology Control Efficiency

3. • 2011-2015 qualitative longitudinal
• 74 initial interviews, 36 across 3 waves
• Use of photographs and video
Energy Biographies
Ely and Caerau
Peterston-
Super-Ely
Pembrokeshire
London
Now working on interdisciplinary FLEXIS project (http://www.flexis.wales/)

4. Technology and the
environment
“Oh ok electric, electric gadgets… I mean the hedge
trimmers are interesting because I only bought those a
couple of years ago and it was deliberately a ‘hang on a
minute this hedge cutting lark is getting really hard work
the older I get’, that motion really aching across here and I
thought yeah lets get some electricity in to help with this
one and it makes a huge difference” (Jeremy)
“we do love our patio heater when it’s a sunny evening but it
gets a bit cold and dark and you can sit out … we love being
outside, we just love that you can you know go, we were
sitting out there one evening … with friends, and it was like
midnight and you could have a drink outside still and its so
lovely here cos its so quiet and everything so but you
wouldn’t have been able to do it without that so or you
would have been freezing” (Lucy)

5. Aerogarden
“I had an initial reaction I was thinking oh that’s a real
shame you know what about you know what about
just getting out and getting dirt in your fingernails and
all that sort of romantic kind of stuff I suppose about
being in a garden and then I thought that’s ridiculous
you don’t even like gardening! So that was a confused
stereotype that I bought into. So then I was thinking
you know there is a tension I was thinking a part of me
was thinking you know that’s really interesting, that’s
really cool, clever use of technology you know it’s
obviously like taking seriously considerations of
efficiency and energy use and maximising sort of
useable output in terms of food according to what
you’re putting into it and you know really innovative
and yet there is just there’s a bit of me that can’t help
thinking you’re losing something about the actual
garden and being outside and space and kind of fresh
air and all those other things.” (Steve)

6. “I think cultivating food and dealing with plants and gardens is
recognized as a key thing that helps connect people to the
world they live in. It helps for mental health and the feeling
of having a reason in the world … my concern, my reservation
is that what is the quality of that connection if it’s cut off from
the reality of reality? If it’s done in a laboratory style way, is
there a desensitivity and a disconnect there that undermines
the experience so like farmers say it, they are in a
computerized tractor using GPS, they are no longer aware of
the soil type or what they are planting, or the spacing or the
season, they can’t feel the season on them very much because
they are air conditioned and they all have CD players and stuff.”
(Rachel)
Nature and mental health

7. “I would rather have natural light and live with the natural
rhythms of a day or a season rather than try to control and
exclude it just seems to me to be a not an appealing way of
being.” (Mary)
“Like the fridge that re-orders it scans yeah it scans the
items you put in and if you run out of butter it sort of scans
and then puts it on your shopping electronically and it gets
ordered and all this but I still think it sort of dumbs us down
as a kind of society and replaces our you know ingenuity and
our thinking, free thinking with
controlled you know thinking
and you know computerisation
of everything” (Dennis)
Technology in the home

8. “I’m just learning at the moment but the
future is to have everything controllable
without getting out of my settee, just because
I love gadgets and I just oh I love it, that’s the
best thing I’ve ever bought that is.” (Doug)
Can smart aid wellbeing?

9. Challenges for a smart future
• Increasing reliance on technology will create
greater social divides
Because what’s going to happen is there is
going to be a massive rich-poor divide isn’t
there? If it carries on the way it is going
and there will be people who just will never be
able to afford that kind of stuff and, god,
what kind of world is that going to be?
(Helen)
• What is time being freed up for?
• Assumption of continued reliance on
electricity
Technology Control Efficiency

10. References
• Chappells, H. and Shove, E. (2005) Debating the future of comfort:
environmental sustainability, energy consumption and the indoor
environment. Building Research and Information. 33(1): 32-40.
• Dodge, R., Daly, A.P., Huyton, J., & Sanders, L.D. (2012). ‘The challenge of
defining wellbeing’. International Journal of Wellbeing, 2(3); pp. 222-235. doi:
10.5502/ijw.v2i3.4
• Ozaki, R. and Shaw, I. (2014) Entangled practices: governance, sustainable
technologies, and energy consumption. Sociology. Vol. 48(3) 590–605
• Strengers, Y. (2013) Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life. Smart Utopia?
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.