12: Adjunct Proceedings - Automotive User Interfaces and ...

ABSTRACT
“The Social Car”:
Workshop on Socially-Inspired C2X Interaction
Andreas Riener
Institute for Pervasive Computing
Johannes Kepler University Linz
riener@pervasive.jku.at
Andrea Gaggioli
Dipartimento di Psicologia
Univ. Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
andrea.gaggioli@unicatt.it
With everywhere available Internet connectivity and the success
and broad penetration of social network services, this
technology has also emerged in the automotive domain. Social
services provide a basis for allowing cars to share sort
of social information (e.g., feelings and emotions) amongst
other vehicles, for example by taking information from diagnostics
systems such as engine or powertrain control units
into account. The potential is enormous, given the amount
of cars on the road worldwide (which is even higher compared
to the number of active Facebook users).
The aim of the workshop goes beyond “just presenting
Facebook updates”. To outline a primitive application scenario,
with socially inspired car-to-car interaction automatic
driver assistance systems would have the foundation to autonomously
communicate and negotiate with each other car
without driver involvement. The central objective is to provoke
an active debate on the adequacy of the concept of
socializing cars, addressing questions such as who can communicate
what, when, how, and why? To tackle these questions,
we would like to invite researchers to take part in an
in-depth discussion of this timely, relevant, and important
field of investigation.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.1.m [Models and Principles]: Miscellaneous—social vehicle
relationships; K.4.2 [Computers and Society]: Social
issues—status, norm, culture, ethics
Keywords
Adjunct Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and
Interactive Vehicular Applications (AutomotiveUI '12), October 17–19, 2012, Portsmouth, NH, USA
Automotive emotions; crowd sourcing; cultural di↵erences;
social status and norm; social vehicle relationships; socializing
cars
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AutomotiveUI’12, October 17-19, Portsmouth, NH, USA.
Copyright (c) 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1751-1/12/10 ... $15.00
Myounghoon Jeon
Mind, Music, Machine Lab
Michigan Technological University
mjeon@mtu.edu
Anind K. Dey
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
anind@cs.cmu.edu
1. EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL INTERACTION
In primitive times, social interaction between human individuals
happened when sitting around the campfire or in the
cave. This style of interaction kept almost unchanged until
the mid of the twentieth century when first consumer electronics
for the mass popped up, mainly driven by advances
in telecommunication and electronic engineering. This progression
was backed up by the emergence of information and
communication technologies. Mainly caused by price decline,
people started to use computers for private purposes
at their homes. At this time, the transfer from face-to-face
communication to human-computer interaction started its
triumphal procession (and the HCI domain was born) [1].
First wave: Disappearing interpersonal interaction
While in former times extended families where living together
on the countryside, this changed a lot with increased
technological advance (actually starting with the industrial
revolution in the beginning of the 19th century). After their
job, people where sitting alone in their flats and over the
time their social behavior and communication abilities degenerated.
The situation has become particularly aggravated
with broad emergence of ICT in the 20th century –
human individuals spent more and more time in using the
computer, watching TV, playing with video consoles, etc.
In 1996 the “Tamagotchi ”handhelddigitalpetwasinitially launched, a computer device that lets the player care for the
pet as much or as little as he/she chooses. The “outcome”
depends on the player’s actions and playing with this device
can be interpreted as a simple form of social interaction. As
of 2010, over 76 million Tamagotchis have been sold worldwide.
This number is a clear indication that humans need
some kind of social interaction.
Second wave: Globalization and virtualization
With the availability of powerful backbone networks together
with high penetration of personal computers, the Internet
has opened a whole new world of opportunities for each
and every individual user. While in the early days information
gathering (Altavista) andshopping(Amazon, eBay)
was the focus of users, people are nowadays using applications/games
to escape into virtual worlds (Second Life) and
to live there their life with whatever character they like.
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