Summary

On the eve of Google's IPO in 2004, Larry Page and Sergey Brin vowed not to be evil. Today, a growing number of technologists would go further, trying to ensure that their work actively improves people's lives. Technology, so pervasive and ubiquitous, has the capacity to increase stress and suffering; but it also has the less-heralded potential to improve the well-being of individuals, society, and the planet. In this book, Rafael Calvo and Dorian Peters investigate what they term "positive computing" -- the design and development of technology to support psychological well-being and human potential.

Calvo and Peters explain that technologists' growing interest in social good is part of a larger public concern about how our digital experience affects our emotions and our quality of life -- which itself reflects an emerging focus on humanistic values in many different disciplines. Synthesizing theory, knowledge, and empirical methodologies from a variety of fields, they offer a rigorous and coherent foundational framework for positive computing. Sidebars by experts from psychology, neuroscience, human--computer interaction, and other disciplines supply essential context. Calvo and Peters examine specific well-being factors, including positive emotions, self-awareness, mindfulness, empathy, and compassion, and explore how technology can support these factors. Finally, they offer suggestions for future research and funding.

Sidebars Timothy N. Bickmore, Jeremy Bailenson, danah boyd, Jane Burns, David R. Caruso, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Felicia Huppert, Mary-Helen Immordino-Yang, Adele Krusche and J. Mark G. Williams, Jane McGonigal, Jonathan Nicholas, Don Norman, Yvonne Rogers

Choice Review

Calvo and Peters (both, Univ. of Sydney, Australia) review the neuroscience of emotion, self-awareness, mindfulness, empathy, altruism, and flow in this interesting work. They describe how digital technologies can enhance human well-being and how computing can evoke positive emotion. The book examines theory and measurement of various well-being outcomes for technology, emphasizing online games and virtual reality. This is an academically oriented, comprehensive, and engaging descriptive survey of the psychology and neuroscience of well-being framed by the argument that computing can and should evoke positive emotional experiences. However, the action-oriented treatment of design methods that could create such desirable human outcomes is cursory. The authors also do not address potential downsides of positive computing, such as well-known Facebook social comparison problems (users revel in the camaraderie of sharing but are subsequently demoralized by the fact that their lives do not measure up to those of their peers). Though computers have always enabled new and positive emotional experiences, contemporary people are, more than ever, immersed in emotional technology; it is critical to understand those experiences. Positive Computing will be useful to advanced students and especially valuable to technologists interested in human experience and behavioral scientists interested in technology. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --John M Carroll, Pennsylvania State University