THE END OF EMOTIONAL PRIVACY

In a context where we are starting to care about our data privacy online, where corporations know who we are and what we want, what if they could also learn about how we feel to adapt our needs to our current mood?

There is software that is able to read our emotions through face recognition using our webcam; what if there were multiple devices around the city constantly getting data from us? Will our emotional privacy disappear?

Poker faces would definitely disappear, even if you are trying hard to cover your emotional state, every emotion that you are feeling warms up, or cools down your body depending on how are you feeling at that moment. We could also take advantage of that. Putting yourself in other people’s shoes is hard sometimes. What if we could develop a sense that made us understand better other people? What if empathy was a new sense? We could build a better world. An improved society.

This project has been developed as a bodysuit wearable that explores the possibility of being able to read emotions more accurately, using an infrared sensor to simulate thermal vision.
This sensor works as a thermal camera that sees in an array of 16 temperatures, which individually notifies the exact temperature of the array to each of the 16 heat pads, precisely located on the back of the bodysuit. Like morse code, but with heat.

To get an idea of the experience you get wearing this bodysuit, if I’m feeling anxious and you are wearing it, you would feel like you are getting a heat massage on your back!
In that case, would you choose to become a better person and help me smooth my anxiety, or would you use the fact that I am anxious to take advantage in a bad way?