After their own children, elderly Japanese apparently prefer robot caregivers and companions to foreign ones (in the increasingly likely event of a severe shortage of ethnic Japanese nurses and social workers). Robots are perceived by seniors, and by politicians too, of eliminating the socio-cultural anxieties provoked by foreign laborers and caregivers. (And for some right-wing […]

Patrik Svensson is a professor in the Humanities and information technologyand director of HUMlab, Umeå University. His current research spans information technology and learning, research infrastructure, screen cultures and the digital humanities as an emerging field. Apart from having main responsibility for HUMlab, he is currently heavily involved in Umeå University's new Arts Campus and […]