How American culture has made technological consumerism essential for the creation of a happy home

Conceived in the 1960s, Walt Disney’s original plans for his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) outlined a utopian laboratory for domestic technology, where families would live, work, and play in an integrated environment. Like many of his contemporaries, Disney imagined homes that would attend to their inhabitants’ every need, and he regarded the home as a site of unending technological progress. This fixation on “space-age” technology, with its promise of domestic bliss, marked an important mid-twentieth-century shift in understandings of the American home. In A Small World, Davin Heckman considers how domestic technologies that free people to enjoy leisure time in the home have come to be understood as necessary parts of everyday life.

Heckman’s narrative stretches from the early-twentieth-century introduction into the home of electric appliances and industrial time-management techniques, through the postwar advent of television and the space-age “house of tomorrow,” to the contemporary automated, networked “smart home.” He considers all these developments in relation to lifestyle and consumer narratives. Building on the tension between agency and control within the walls of homes designed to anticipate and fulfill desires, Heckman engages debates about lifestyle, posthumanism, and rights under the destabilizing influences of consumer technologies, and he considers the utopian and dystopian potential of new media forms. Heckman argues that the achievement of an environment completely attuned to its inhabitants’ specific wants and needs—what he calls the “Perfect Day”—institutionalizes everyday life as the ultimate consumer practice.

"“A Small World is an amazing accomplishment. Heckman has, aside from completing what will surely be hailed as a landmark study in the history of smart houses, manages to integrate a wide range of theories into a coherent and substantial narrative of the struggle of technology to integrate itself into the lives of consumers. This book has direct relevance beyond those studying automation and home technology, and is a vital read for anyone concerned with the incorporation of new media into contemporary culture.”" - Reconstruction

"“[An] engaging and well-meaning book. . . .”" - Reviews in Cultural Theory

"“By focusing on both the history of technology and the representation of technology in literature, film, and television, Heckman’s book effectively analyzes the cultural discourse surrounding the very concept of ‘smartness,’ and it offers a vehement critique of the incorporation of technology into everyday life. . . . Heckman’s book is extremely thoughtful and well-researched. . . .”" - Leonardo Reviews

"“Davin Heckman’s intriguing title A Small World: Smart Houses and the Dream of the Perfect Day immediately drew me in. His book gathers intensely detailed research into aspects of mid to late 20th-century American culture and overlaps that with references to futuristic visions of the home and lifestyles. Heckman illustrates the details of Smart Houses of last century, including the introduction of computers in the home, and then explores contemporary American society on many levels. This is a very satisfying read that gets better as it unfolds.”" - M/C Reviews