Body Language/Non-Verbal Cues in the Digital Age

There has already been a huge amount of research into non-verbal communication and its importance in our everyday understanding of one another. To a large extent, this has been lost in online communications, which is more and more becoming our main method of talking to each-other.

Biometric technology, as mentioned here, could have huge implications for the way we communicate with others in the 21st Century. In many ways, as we spend more and more of our lives online, our daily experience has become solitary. Maybe if digital communication could be made to incorporate our feelings and moods based on non-verbal cues our experience of using digital media could be less impersonal. A system such as this could have serious benefits for people who are isolated or lonely, living their lives mostly online.

Another area that could benefit from this sort of technology is inter-cultural communication. In different cultures, body language can mean different things. If biometric technology could be used in this way, to translate body language between different cultures, a greater inter-cultural understanding could be reached through the use of digital media.