Document Type
Review Essay
Abstract
[First paragraph]
In A Small World, Heckman traces the evolution of the smart house, starting with the narratives of futurism inherent in the influx of electrical appliances into the early twentieth century, through the competing futuristic visions of the "house of tomorrow"in Disney's EPCOT and Celebration, into the introduction of computers and new technologies of home control in the 1980s, culminating in the latest version of the smart house characterized by a high level of media saturation. The contemporary smart home, Heckman argues, culminates in the Perfect Day, "an attempt to institutionalize everyday life as the ultimate consumer practice...[which] offers a posthuman solution" to the struggles of life in a consumer world "by which traditional ethical considerations can be avoided and pleasure can be pursued" (17).
Repository Citation
DuBose, Mike. "On Davin Heckman's A Small World: Smart Houses and the Dream of the Perfect Day." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 8, no. 3, 2008, pp. 1–4. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol8/iss3/8