Internet of abilities: Human augmentation, and beyond (keynote)

Traditionally, the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) was primarily concerned with designing and investigating interfaces between humans and machines. However, with recent technological advances, the concepts of “enhancing”, “augmenting” or even “re-designing” humans themselves are becoming feasible and serious topics of scientific research as well as engineering development. “Augmented Human” is a term that I use to refer to this overall research direction. Augmented Human introduces a fundamental paradigm shift in HCI: from human-computer-interaction to human-computer-integration, and out abilities will be mutually connected through the networks (what we call IoA, or Internet of Abilities, as the next step of IoT: Internet of Things). In this talk, I will discuss rich possibilities and distinct challenges in enhancing human abilities. I will introduce our recent projects including design of flying cameras as our remote and external eyes, a home appliance that can increase your happiness, an organic physical wall/window that dynamically mediates the environment, and an immersive human-human connection concept called “JackIn.”