uninvited Guests
Uninvited Guests (4.42 mins) explores the frictions between an elderly man and his smart home. Thomas, aged 70, lives on his own after his wife died last year. His children send him smart devices to track and monitor his diet, health and sleep from a distance.
But Thomas has always been fiercely independent, happy to live in an organised mess. He struggles with the order and rules imposed on him by the objects that are meant to make his life easier.
In a world where ’smart objects’ will increasingly be used to provide care at a distance, how will we live with these uninvited guests?
This is a great little film, amusing and touching, capturing the genuine tensions that smart objects can easily generate. Imagine a discussion group in a care home, after watching the film. What do the smart objects promise, to whom, and for what ends? What is the gospel of the smart objects?
There are well meaning although complex goals, in the minds of the makers of the smart objects, the children who buy them, and perhaps the government that subsidises them, but how does the Christian gospel offer a different and a better story?
Click on the link and play the clip in full screen. It’s good fun.