I wonder how we ensure off-line human behaviour measurement belongs to social scientists, not only digital platforms?

Speaker(s):

Anne Motan, Kingston University London

Abstract:

There has been a considerable rise in the collection and analysis of egocentric or first-person video to support the development of applications for wearable computing. In addition, the platforms (Meta, Google) expect to commercialise wearable computing in the coming year. Wearable computing will of necessity measure physical human behaviour, the domain of social science. Unless we develop a research methodology that can passively and independently collect human behaviour data, the platforms will determine our access to this data. The technology is available, but the cost of scaling the measurement system as the industry did with audience-peoplemeters and till-purchase data is beyond the capacity of the research industry. I wonder if there is the will or how we could create the capacity for the research industry to invest in an independent passive scale measurement methodology for human behaviour.