In the past decade, the Finnish government has been eager to enable and support the development, implementation and growing business of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence—that is, welfare technologies in elderly care services. In these visions, technologies offer an intervention to increase health and wellbeing while also being an economic commodity to generate profit. Therefore, expectations towards welfare technologies show politics with high optimism, in which simultaneous expectations of good health, smooth services, a growing economy and a thriving welfare state are fostered.

This dissertation delves into a problem in which care politics raise high expectations of technology while catering to the needs of the ageing population. My main research question is as follows: How are the high expectations related to the technology realised in care practices, and what are the ethico-political implications? This dissertation consists of four articles that exemplify the different dimensions of realising these expectations.

The dissertation is theoretically based on multiple perspectives from science and technology studies. My theoretical framework enables a focus on ethico-political practices and expectations, offers a symmetrical approach to care and technology and provides a critical viewpoint to the technological promises laid in contemporary care politics.

I use multi-sited ethnography as a methodology. The research materials consist of documents, observations and interviews. The focus of the empirical materials is on social robots and telecare technology—that is, robots designed to provide companionship and assistance and surveillance technologies for secure care. I read the different research materials through the sociology of translations, which emphasises that the manner in which expectations are fulfilled concerns the adaptation and transformation of different actors and their aspirations.

This dissertation advances the theoretical and empirical understanding of the welfare technology phenomenon. My main argument is that expectations related to welfare technologies in Finland are realised in actual care practices through negotiations between the regimes of hype and hope. The regime of hype captures the health and social policy side of the welfare technology phenomenon, while the regime of hope mainly concerns institutional care. Hype creates, collects and circulates optimistic expectations, while hope enables living with the uncertainty that comes with technology’s material agency. With technology comes the possibility of disruption, which intervenes with care relations and, paradoxically, enables them by offering possibilities for creativity.

Experimentation is central to both regimes. While experimentation in the regime of hype aims at fulfilling optimistic expectations, experimentation in the regime of hope is obligatory to secure care. Experimentation in practice makes the wellbeing of individuals and the state commensurate, transforming disappointments into achievements and technological possibilities into necessities. Both regimes value ambivalence and uncertainty due to their shared focus on experimentation.