Ubiquitous Monitoring and Behavioural Change: A Semiotic Perspective

摘要

Improvements in electronics and computing have increased the potential of monitoring and surveillance technologies. Although now widely used,these technologies have been known to cause unintentional effects,such as increases in stress in those being observed. Further advancements in technology lead us towards the 'pervasive era' of computing,where a new means of monitoring ubiquitously becomes possible. This monitoring differs from existing methods in its distinct lack in physical boundaries. To address the effects of this kind of monitoring,we propose a model consisting of a series of factors identified in the monitoring and pervasive literature believed to influence behaviour. The aim of the model is to understand and predict behaviour,thereby preventing any potential undesirable side effects. Various socio-technical frameworks have been proposed to guide research within ubiquitous computing; in this paper we use the semiotic framework to analyse our model in order to better understand and explain the behavioural impact of ubiquitous monitoring.