Amanda Parrish Morgan discusses the baby stroller and other technological innovations in the intimate space of the family. Join us for this meditative conversation about intimate technologies.
Self-Driving Strollers: Intimacy, Technology, and the Automation of Care
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
1-2:30pm
Humanities Lab, 228 Batelle-Tompkins
This talk draws from Amanda Parrish Morgan’s analysis of the baby stroller as an intimate technology, explored in her book Stroller and her recent essay in Wired magazine, in order to consider the evolving relationship between technological innovations and the intimate space of the family.
Automated strollers, like the Gluxkind Ella now available for preorder, promise a more accessible option for caretakers needing mobility assistance. Of course it would be an overstatement to suggest that such automation strips meaning from human relationships, that a stroller powered by muscle rather than battery somehow signals a more meaningful, more real form of parenting.
But something—perhaps care, intimacy, or connection—stands to be altered in automating the intimate details of our lives. I can see the care my grandmother’s hands put in the neat rows of stitches on the sweaters she knitted me precisely because the product itself took time to make. Is it because taking and developing a picture used to take longer, be less certain to “turn out,” that the portraits I took of my high school friends on 35mm analog film feel more personal? Is the way we tend to equate work with worth complicated when a task becomes easier?
About our speaker
Amanda Parrish Morgan is the author most recently of STROLLER (Bloomsbury 2022), which the New Yorker named one of the best books of 2022. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, LitHub, Guernica, The Millions, n+1, Electric Literature, and The Washington Post, among others. She teaches at Fairfield University and the Westport Writers’ Workshop.
Take a look at Morgan’s work and visit her website for links to her other talks and published work.
This event is part of the Technology and Culture Colloquium at the Humanities Lab, a series of talks showcasing innovative contemporary perspectives on our mediated world.
The event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
RSVP on Eventbrite.