Picked up this book following the Tech Won’t Save Us interview of its author. Given how it perfectly fits my current deep dive into the Japan tech industry, I couldn’t let it pass.

As the subtitle says, it is an ethnography of eldercare automation in Japan. Ie, the author interviewed and analysed pretty much each and every level of the value chain of the robot industry in Japan and the social impact. From political plan, immersion in an elder care home to immersion into the research laboratories in charge of developing the robots or interviews with the developpers in charge of the applications… pretty much every level is in analysed.

Interestingly but not surprisingly, what struck me once more is how deconnected are the developpers and researchers from the actual workers and tasks they are supposed to address. What is supposed to help reduce the workload actually increase it and the tools end up becoming another thing the workers have to take care of, in the same way they care of their residents. The complete abstraction of the elderly persons, the tasks and the workers is also extremely telling and might be the main take away of the whole book.

The elderly persons are basically reduced to an average user, not even based on ergonomic tables or taking into account the specificities of personns in elderly care. The work itself is simplified to standalone tasks, independent of the institutional work or anything happening beside the main task the robot targets. The way they are also reducing elderly care to purely physical tasks and completely disregarding the human aspect of it is interesting. Basically, what gets targeted is what usually gives most statisfaction to the workers.

The whole discussion on odorless culture was also extremely interesting. Basically having a robot becoming the cultural front of the task while the actual work is done by staff with a different background.

Final word

If you are interested in robot development in Japan, with a social focus, this is a must have.