A Home with a Future. Digital Domesticity and the Vague Fictions of Silicon Valley

Abstract

The last two decades have seen an explosion in the numbers of digital devices that “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life.” Here we bring to critical attention the material, ethical and spatial consequences of integrating digital devices in physical spaces. We concentrate on the way Silicon Valley constructs a narrative of digital domesticity. Harriet Riches uses the term to describe online magazines that seek to revive hand-made crafts, domestic life, and a yearning for the slower pace of a, ironically, pre-digital life. We reflect on the way that Silicon Valley makes use of vague fictions—narratives that blur the divide between present and future—as a way of presenting us with a vision of domestic life that is at once nostalgic of social forms and accommodating of new technologies.