In an insightful piece for CannyVision, Sisir Koppaka posits that Apple latest creation – Watch is really about tracking user emotions and ushers in age of truly mainstream affective computing. Koppaka suggests “Apple will now know your emotional reaction to every social media interaction, conversation (phone calls or text), news, games, and even ads – because they’re tracking your heartbeat.”
Sisir Koppaka:
[su_quote]
One of the primary means of monitoring physiological signs for capturing emotions (fear, happiness, stress, etc.) is to detect the blood volume pulse – the volume of blood flowing through your extremities. By shining infrared light and measuring the reflected proportion, one can detect the blood volume flowing during various segments of your pulse. Guess what kind of a sensor the Watch has.
For iPhone or iPad users who will wear a Watch, every web page visited and email read, every social network interaction, iMessage, SMS, every banner ad, video ad, every app used, every Facetime or Skype call made, every game played, every financial transaction made, every credit card swiped via Apple Pay, every notification of weather made, every photo viewed, every photo edited, every piece of music you listen to, every music video seen, every conversation, every phone call, every single interaction with any iOS device just got tagged with your emotion. You could probably turn it off, like GPS. But every app would probably be designed assuming you left it on. Just like GPS.[/su_quote]
