Who is in control

Recently, more and more people would like to connect computers with emotions, feelings, and experiences. Obviously, I am one of them. It sounds very exciting to create emotional computers(or affective computing?), or see how computers can repsond to our mood, or to see how computers can affect our experiences. However, to be honest, just as I started to try to further explore this direction, I found I placed myself in a kind of awkward situation. For example, on one hand, I want to have computers know our emotions, and can automatically react accordingly. On the other hand, do I really want a computer to know what I am feeling or thinking? A very scaring idea. Furthermore, if we want to enrich our experiences, do we have to use or refer to computers? There are already a lot of interesting things happening in our everyday life. If we want to enjoy life, just stay away from computers for a while, to enjoy a face to face converation, a pleasant lunch or dinner with friends, and to drive close to the nature....

While we try all the way to generate a variety of combinations of computers and feelings, or emotions, or arts, and etc, we have to think what combinations are promissing or what are ridiculous. Obviously, the computer is not every thing, and we need to make it to do the right thing. What is the right thing? Here I think, the words from my advisor set one kinds of criteria : whether it is the right thing or not, it is a matter about who is in control - the computer or the user.

Since forever, "automatically" is a word that is most widely used to describe computer systems, and especially, in the HCI field, it seems, the more intelligent, the more friendly the interaction is, although in such a way, we have to struggle with privacy issues (Almost every ubiquitous computing paper will touch privacy, yet would always just stop there and leave concerns and awareness). It is the time for us to rethink about how smart a computer should be. If computers can automatically do everything, even automatically detect your emotions and respond, then how can imagine, how lazy, or passive humans are? Really, don't let the computer take control over your life!

With this concern, who is in control, I rule out the idea of having computers know my feelings. That's the only part that is something "MY", something that struke from outside, and something I still haven't made sense of it, and something I'd like to appreciate and stay in control. How can computers can know that better than myself.

Also, feelings, or emotions are something vague, something complex, and something personal, and maybe you can never find words to describe them exactly. How can computers control that without words being able describe accurately?

Then how can we connect computers and human emotions, feelings and experiences? What special about computers? What kind of things that can not happen without computers?