What's It Like to Work in a Care Home?

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I want to shift to looking at what actually happens in the care homes and how these robots are actually implemented. And so I think before we talk about the robots, maybe you can give us an idea of what it's actually like to work in one of these care homes or what these care homes are actually like in Japan. So typically it's mainly female residents, because for a number of reasons, women tend to live longer in Japan. The average age was around 88 in this care home in Sakura. You know, there were more male care workers, quite often who'd been laid off from manufacturing jobs.

Paris Marx is joined by James Wright to discuss Japan’s efforts to develop robots to care for its growing elderly population, what the government hoped to achieve with that plan, and why it hasn’t worked out as planned.

James Wright is a research associate with Turning Institute and a visiting lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. He’s also the author of Robots Won’t Save Japan. You can follow James on Twitter at @jms_wright.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Paris is visiting New Zealand and doing a number of events through the latter half of March. Find all the dates and details here.
James wrote about Japan’s efforts to automate elder care for MIT Tech Review.
Jennifer Robertson spoke about the gendering of robots to cement conservative gender norms.

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