Antonio ArgandoA±a – författare

The Home in the Digital Age is a set of multidisciplinary studies exploring the impact of digital technologies in the home, with a shift of emphasis from technology to the people living and using this in their homes.The book covers a wide variety of topics on the design, introduction and use of digital technologies in the home, combining the technological dimension with the cognitive, emotional, cultural and symbolic dimensions of the objects that incorporate digital technologies and project them onto people’s lives. It offers a coherent approach, that of the home, which gives unity to the discussion.Scholars of the home, the house and the family will find here the connection with the problems derived from the use of domestic robots and connected devices. Students of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, big data and other branches of digital technologies will find ideas and arguments to apply their disciplines to the home and participate fruitfully in forums where digital technologies are built and negotiated in the home. Experts from various disciplines ・ psychologists and sociologists; philosophers, epistemologists and ethicists; economists; engineers, architects, urban planners and designers and so on ・ and also those interested in developing policies for the home and family will find this book contains well-founded and useful ideas to focus their work.

This book uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine the relationship between the quality of domestic life and the home environment, in its material and relational dimension, with individual and social happiness, in the context of current changes.

The theme of happiness and well-being is framed within two significant changes, themselves affected by the recent COVID-19 pandemic: the relationship between the individual’s quality of life and engagement within the community, and the role of new technologies in everyday life. The authors highlight the relational nature of happiness and the centrality of the home environment in its promotion. Three dimensions of psychosocial well-being in the home are analysed: the personal one, consisting of a sense of stability, intimacy and sharing; the social one, which considers the domestic environment as a place for civic education and, in times of pandemic, the site of professional activity and the physical one, consisting of spaces, services and architectural styles.

This book is ideal for readers who wish to cross disciplinary boundaries and explore the topic of domestic happiness in its different facets. The target audience is both professional researchers and advanced graduate and undergraduate students.

Chapter 12 of this book is now OA on www.taylorfrancis.com under Creative Commons licens CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.