A School of Emergent Priorities research poster inventories 412 automations in 61 recently transferred households, finds fewer than half can be both attributed and amended, and proposes a four-class custody taxonomy running from attested to feral.
A field inventory of 61 recently transferred homes scores every timer and routine on who can name it, who can change it, and who lives around it
In 61 households that changed hands within the past three years, researchers went room to room writing down everything the house does on a timer. The resulting record, 412 automations across irrigation, heating, hot water, lighting and robotics, anchors Towards a Custody Taxonomy of Inherited Automation, a research poster released today by the School of Emergent Priorities.
Each automation was scored on whether anyone present could name who set it, whether anyone could change it, and who reschedules life around it. Fewer than half passed on both counts. The poster sorts the remainder into a four-class custody taxonomy, from attested schedules through to feral ones, which no resident can attribute, alter or explain, and which the study found in 26 of the 61 homes.
A handover is never only a document; it is everything the document declined to mention. The School is grateful to the households who let us read their houses this closely.
— Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer, School of Emergent Priorities
The work harmonises room-by-room observation with interview and document records into a single custody account for each automation, extending the School’s anticipatory-capability agenda into the everyday fabric of housing transitions. The University regards the poster as a durable contribution to its wider account of what institutions leave running.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.szl9um.