Unconscious Computing through Emerging Wearable Systems

Dear Colleagues,

What if future wearable systems would blend information and attentional cues into the perceived surrounding environment in a barely noticeable way, so as to not disturb ongoing thoughts and actions, yet influencing everyday microdecisions of the individual (or group)? This is both a scary and intriguing vision, and emerging wearable technologies are pointing in this direction: personal digital systems designed to communicate to unconscious cognitive processes, thus bypassing reflective thought, with the intention to trigger behavioral change in short and/or long-term. Ultimately, such systems would have the power to alter the way we think, act, and perceive the world like no other digital systems have before, despite and because of doing it all “in the background”.

In this Special Issue, we want gather as many perspectives as possible on this class of emerging persuasive systems, including grand visions, limited prototype experiments, and (critical) theory development.

Example application areas: health and well-being, climate change, learning/knowledge transfer, crisis/disaster management.

Key areas of this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

methods and models for unconscious human–computer interaction (implicit input/output, peripheral interaction, ambient displays, mindless computing, deceptive user interfaces, subtle gaze direction, persuasive technologies); psychology (perception, cognition, priming, storytelling, illusionism); wearable sensing/actuation (biometric sensor approaches, eye tracking, head-mounted displays); context-aware systems (3D environment sensing and modeling, machine learning); philosophy (ethics and IT); law; marketing (nudging); social science.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Pederson
Guest Editor

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