Imagining the Cool-ag: Or, Freedom Considered Harmful

This short paper makes an argument about our lack of comfort, as researchers, in developing a science, and a technology, for enacting control over behavior. We present a design fiction about a smart prison, in which behavior change is facilitated via always-on IoT-facilitated monitoring. This fiction may be read simultaneously as a constructive application of behavioural science to an appropriate context, and as a dystopian attack on personal freedom. We argue that the implementation of ubicomp systems that are intended to facilitate behavior change (i.e., almost all ubicomp systems), will inevitably lead to questions over personal freedom. We draw parallels to the reaction of society to the field of behavioural psychology, which has an expressed goal of gaining prediction and control over behavior. Ultimately, if we are to realise the potential of ubicomp to change society positively, we need to become comfortable with enacting control, or in other words, taking responsibility.