This innovative technological advancement has created an overall sci-fi feel to life through its contemporary and ingenious composition, and it’s outstanding originality. Imagine a world in which the work on one’s laptop, cellular device, or tablet was done for the individual before he or she even had to click, or touch a single thing. All the individual has to do is think and respond normally, and through facial recognition this piece of technology will know emotions that are being evoked, and one’s overall state of mind. Affdex and its affiliated company Affectiva have directly illustrated how technology can influence psychology.

What does Affdex do?

Affdex is a facial recognition software that allows individual’s to make any particular face, and have the program know what emotions are instilled within the respected individual through using Affdex. Affdex uses facial recognition to, for the most part, gather information on an advertisement, movie, television show, which further highlights the emotions. Why is this essential? So the respected team producing the respected show, movie, and/or advertisement can build off of the data stemming from Affdex’s facial recognition that speaks of what the individual is feeling, to improve the respected quality of the particular video within the media. The complexity that resides within this is that, Affectiva, which is the company that created Affdex, also uses this technology to teach individual’s diagnosed with autism how to read facial expressions. This is the ethical component that is important to consider. Utilizing such a program for autistic individual’s is outstanding; however, are their plausible conflicts of selling this technology to corporate companies?

Now Where’s The Controversy?

This seems like an amazing idea right? It’s not only an ingenious invention, but it aids companies in learning even more about their consumers; however, this begs the question as to if this is an invasion of privacy. This is directly related to how a Facebook User’s advertisements on the sidebar of their newsfeed cater to what they have previously been searching for on a particular search engine. Where does humanity draw the line? The Internet makes it impossible to hide anything, and this technology is just an extension of that very concept. Now one may argue that this is just how the Internet works, and it is simply something humanity just needs to mindlessly accept; however, will the general public never draw the line, and say that the respected authority has officially transgressed the boundary of what is acceptable, and what is not. This piece of technology should be selective in who can attain it, considering it comes with a profound amount of power, and that power cannot be abused.

Is This Technology Worth Purchasing?

For advertising and film companies, yes it is worth investing in, because it can augment respected ratings for a certain advertisement(s) and/or film(s) through the data collected through it; however, what the advertisement for this technological advancement will refrain from mentioning is the invasion of privacy it infringes on the respected user. Whoever this company decides to distribute this innovative technology to, must be selective in terms of the legitimacy of the respected companies, due to the plausible implications of such a technology.

My intentions here, are not to diminish the magnificence of this invention. It is simply astounding that “The algorithm identifies an emotional expression by comparing it with countless others that it has previously analyzed” (Khatchadourian). Through this advancement what leaps can individual’s take within everyday life: professor’s could soon predict students enthusiasm, manager’s could see their employees enthusiasm whilst working, and autistic individual’s could grasp facial expressions. There is a level of trepidation one must take into account, in regards to who this technological advancement is in the hands of, because there is a certain level of power that can possibly be abused.

Works Cited

Khatchadourian, Raffi. “We Know How You Feel – The New         Yorker.” The  New Yorker. Conde Nast, 19 Jan. 2015. Web. 28 Jan. 2016.

“Home.” Affectiva. Web. 28 Jan. 2016.

Affectiva. “Affectiva Overview.” Advertisement. Youtube, November 6, 2014 . Video. 28 Jan. 2016.