House 2.0: Towards an Ethics for Surveillance in Intelligent Living and Working Environments

The basic research questions of this paper are concerned with emergent surveillance-related technologies and practices in connection with intelligent buildings at work and at home: How do these technologies and practices change the flows of information? What are the surveillance potentials? What are the ethical consequences? In the first chapter, I explore three aspects of what a house is. Firstly, I study the history of the house of the future and discuss the opposing conceptions of dream and nightmare. Secondly, I take a look at the distinction between house and home/workplace. Thirdly, the inhabitants of the house will be discussed. The second chapter focuses on future housing as imagined today with regards to surveillance and ethics. Firstly, I discuss surveillance studies in relation to home and workplace. Secondly, characteristics of the house of the future will be discussed. Thirdly, I discuss ethical architecture and design. The paper concludes that the futuristic, technologically-enhanced house seems to be just around the corner. Not in the sense of The Jetsons as home or Star Trek as workplace, but as an adaptive environment that have the potentials to empower people at home and at work. For that reason, it seems important to focus on the inhabitants of the home and the employees at work rather than solely on architectural and technological possibilities. House 2.0 should not just be a projection of today’s houses with extra technology, but a place that facilitates new and better ways for life, work and ethical action. Surveillance, ethics, intelligent house, home, workplace, architecture, user-centered design