Social Technologies
Authors: Joseph Timoney, Azeema Yaseen and Damien McEvoy – , Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University
Social technologies enable meaningful social interactions between people, devoid of geographical and time constraints. These technologies are facilitated by a networked communication capability, for example the Internet or a mobile device. We can say, they act as a bridge between humans, no matter how remote they are from each other. Do you know that Facebook, Twitter, and Skype are social technology enabled social networks? If you have an internet connection, they are accessible. Some of these tools are general purpose, while others are domain specific, such as those targeted for health (e.g., wearables and mobile Health), or music (e.g., SoundCloud, Spotify). The three branches of social technologies are illustrated in Figure 1. below.
The development and application of social technologies will promote aims driven by the All institute; The ALL institute aims to facilitate human living and improve the quality of lives across any boundaries, supported by appropriate technologies. To achieve this, the All Institute provides an unparalleled interdisciplinary environment to develop and promote such technologies.
Aligning with this aim, our research interest is the intersection between the two in the form of social technologies for healthcare (patient-practitioners) through musical activities. The theme of our work is ‘Ubiquitous music (ubimus)’ and has a strong social and community underpinning. Our objective is to create social music technology applications: they facilitate networked interaction and engagement that would otherwise be impossible. This will allow inter-connections between people to raises their sense of wellbeing through creative activity, which is increasingly recognised as being important to all aspects of peoples’ health.
Many are familiar with the term ‘Ubiquitous Computing’, which is any goal-oriented activity performed anywhere, anytime and in any form using computing machinery. This includes wearing a smart watch or having a smart home appliance. What if we combine it with music? Ubiquitous Music was proposed by Keller et al. (2019) to bring music more closely into everyday life using technology. Its span includes human computer interfaces, creativity studies, and music education. It can be intertwined within complex human relationships related to expression and creativity, that shares thinking, feelings, and ideas. Effective interaction is achieved as a balance between user input and technological automation.
The Ubiquitous Music Group (g-ubimus) started its activities in 2007 and has received institutional support from various Brazilian and international funding agencies. Since 2010, the Ubimus workshop has been organised annually.
The idea of applying musical technologies for Health and Wellbeing have been investigated at Maynooth university for a while now. The BeatHealth project, which ran from 2013-2017 as a collaboration between the Depts. Of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, and within a larger EU FP7 consortium, was a good example. Its aim was to develop personalised technology that enhanced the entrainment of a users’ movement with the rhythm patterns of the music on a user’s playlist to improve their health and wellness. The users were both healthy runners and those with the Parkinson’s disease motor disorder. This has led to further ideas and plans with respect to the development of techniques for the musical representation of data within the context of Ubimus research. Now, the intersection of Ubimus with social technologies can open new areas for music applications. One potential is the improvement of Virtual therapeutic music technology, the relevance of which has come sharply into focus with the Covid restrictions of this year. Music Therapy has both psychological and physical dimensions and has the potential to offer a drug-free/drug-reduced form of care. It also offers a meaningful therapeutic process when the client has severe limitations in expressing him/herself verbally.
The impetus is coming from the recent work on the Internet of Musical Things (IoMusT), a proposed framework which was presented in a significant review paper published in 2018. IoMusT is a subfield of the Internet of Things (IoT). This is, in the broadest sense, about everything being connected to the internet, and involves networks, devices, and data, playing a variety of roles. IoMusT defines computing networks dedicated to the production and/or reception of musical content through musical objects. These Musical things could be Smart Musical Instruments (SMI) or wearables and are connected in a way that enables multidirectional communication, both locally and remotely. Some example SMIs are the Sensus Smart Guitar, the Smart Cajón, and the Smart Mandolin.
Our proposed framework (see here) includes:
- Three main entities: i) client, ii) therapist and iii) their musical interaction. They are connected through SMIs to perform a cooperative musical activity.
- The use of data from various on-instrument sensors to monitor and analyse the musical activity of the clients. Depending on the requirements of the therapist, this data could be used to assess their behaviour, cognition, and emotion based on the music played by the client. This is called Music Emotion Recognition (MER). This supports the assessment of the music therapy process.
- An Embodied Musical Prediction (movement of body during musical activity) [Martin et al. 2020] model will track and analyse the client’s performance throughout the session. It will then try to recommend future musical activity that would be in line with the overall therapeutic goals.
Based on this framework, therapy could be carried out as a remote interaction using smart devices. The therapist directs patients to play music, for example as a free improvisation and letting them engage through their own feelings. The IoMusT framework ensures the effectiveness of the communications on the infrastructure and the quality of experience. In the health context the parameters of the improvisation need to be underpinned when analysing its overall effects on human health and wellbeing. Introducing an Artificial Intelligence dimension can help assist the effort required by the users (client and therapist) and support provided by the remote therapy system.
Normally, face-face communication during any therapy session is recognised as key. Could we be scared or intimidated by this proposed technology? Is it possible to convey compassion? Can we preserve the social factors when creating virtual, remote healthcare services? Such concerns are genuine, but we are optimistic that it will be beneficial. I was following the news from American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) and it is worth knowing how they are making virtual therapies possible. Due to Covid-2019, the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) has published resources for virtual music therapy (VMT) and an overview is given by Block & Knott (2020), in which a model was presented to provide VMT through Telehealth, with Zoom andGoToMeeting for example. This VMT model is explained in a video and further information is available on official page of AMAT (see here COVID-19 Resources for Music Therapists and Students). In Ireland, an initiative taken by Tallaght University Hospital (TUH) during this pandemic is its virtual music therapy series of acoustic music videos: “Sing with Me”, and its relaxation videos: “Relax with Me” performed by Clara Monahan, Music Therapist at TUH. These videos are available on the TUH YouTube channel. The next level is then to deliver interactive virtual therapies that can best meet the patient/client’s needs and abilities.
When I personally think about some association between technology and human, although we can sense that it might give us a feeling of ‘being replaced or more prioritised’, But there is always a positive argument which becomes favourable to how we perceive something and so the following quotation:
“Technological evolution is the result of our own desire to lead a better life.”
― R.S. Amblee
From this point of view, Social Technology could make our lives better and add quality to our everyday life through human-centric developments.