Patented Emotions: Attention, Appropriation, and Capture

• In Event: Attention! - III: Pauses and Punctuations of Experience

Abstract

Big tech companies are currently paying attention to users’ emotions and feelings (McStay 2018). In this paper, I will analyze two patents: first by Amazon which describes an innovation or recognizing user's emotional states from voice data (Amazon Pat.No. US10096319B1) and the second by Facebook, which introduces a technique of analyzing emotions from facial expressions as they are captured by a laptop’s camera (Facebook Pat.No. 20150242679A1). These patents illustrate that the companies care about their user’s feelings and emotions in a very specific way. They enable the companies to better capture the attention of their users by providing emotionally qualified content on one hand and finding the right time to push content such as targeted advertisements on the other (Cf. Bucher 2018). In my analysis of the patents, I am following A.N. Whitehead who in his process philosophy defines feelings as mechanisms of capture and appropriation. What I argue is that these patents describe technologies that are not only aimed to capture user’s attention based on their emotional states but they also aim to generate particular moods or affective tonalities (Massumi 2008) that fundamentally shape and condition user experience for individuals and collectives.

Bucher, T (2018) If...Then. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Massumi, B (2008) “The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens” Inflexions 1.1
McStay, A (2018) Emotional AI. London:Sage.
Whitehead, AN ((1929). Process and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Author

• Tero Karppi, University of Toronto