Lauren McCarthy’s main idea is the idea of ‘home,’ in the sense that she wants people to feel comfortable, whether that is in someone’s actual house or not. To experiment with this, she has created many different projects. One of the projects was Follower, a phone app that paired two people and had one of the people follow the other, but without the other person noticing them. McCarthy created this project because she believed that some people like to be followed and watched, and she was right. Some users felt more comfortable being watched because they knew they were not invisible to others, and their actions now had some sort of meaning.
McCarthy’s projects then moved to be more artificial intelligence, or AI, based. She thought about how home AI systems, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, are “ambiguous intelligence” that allows developers into one’s home. To move away from this, she created LAUREN, a home system controlled by McCarthy herself; a human, not AI. She controlled people’s homes and tried to be better than AI by anticipating human needs and providing services, such as letting someone know if their hair looked good, that AI might not be able to currently provide. However, human-controlled things can come with human error. For example, one user asked if she had taken her medication that day. McCarthy quickly reviewed footage to try and see if the user had taken it, and ultimately decided she had not. However, what if she had? It could have been harmful if LAUREN mistakenly thought a user had taken their medication, but they actually did not, or vice versa.
McCarthy then moved into the world of open source software. She did not particularly feel welcome in the area, but then made p5.js. With p5.js, she wanted to be inclusive and make everyone feel comfortable using the technology. The software is not really about technology, it is about community.