Spiritual computing

In 2006 I became interested in using context awareness for something more than just recommendations and adaptive behaviours and also looking beyond emotion-awareness. My interest was in how technology could support us at a spiritual level, no matter what our spiritual needs are (i.e., religious or otherwise)? Together with Dirk Trossen and Craig Warren Smith we put together various scenarios and requirements for context-aware systems able to determine and support users’ spiritual needs and also looked at how considering such needs would impact companies business-wise.  We also started creating a framework for a SpiriComp group and had discussions with various researchers within Intel Research, Microsoft Research and France Telecom.

Some of the interesting issues I have looked at were related to stress management, confidence booster, spiritual growth and support (including social networks).

These activities were eventually stopped once I left Nokia but my current work does include my interest in stress management and supporting reflective behaviours through technologies.

Related: “Can ‘Spiritual Computing’ Drive Web 3.0?” by Michael Hickins, article appeared in internetnews.com on July 28, 2006.