"Affective computing" will reshape healthcare

Along with Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat, Rosalind Picard of MIT's Center for Affective Comptuing rounds out the IdeaFestival 2012 speaker lineup.

Affective computing aims to bridge the gap between technology and its emotion-laden creators, by, for example, creating methods to read facial expressions over the Web, which could improve medical diagnostics or lead to more effective educational instruction. In the broadest sense, the goal is to develop technology to reliably sense, communicate and respond to emotion. As such it not only builds on improvements in sensor and other technologies, but recognizes that as biological beings, emotion and cognition are inseparable. That understanding alone has begun to profoundly reshape fields as diverse as philosophy and robotics.

Rosalind Picard will talk at the festival about how emotion data will reshape healthcare.

All-access and Day passes to the IdeaFestival are available. I hope to see you there!

Wayne