Research

Technology and Social Imagination
Technology and Social Imagination https://www.chihyungjeon.com/

Human-Technology Relationship, Engineering Politics, Science for the Public Good

How to imagine a livable world by designing and debating technologies

Technology is not simply an object of engineering design and business calculation. It permeates our personal and social lives. As we design and use technology, we also imagine a society. Our relationship with technology is something that needs to be morally thought through, socially negotiated, politically debated, and culturally assimilated. Our decisions on when, where, why, and how people will interact with technology affect the ways we interact with each other and our society is governed. We redefine education when we put tablet PCs and Internet connections in classrooms without necessarily increasing human interactions between teachers and students. We reformulate medicine and welfare when we replace human caregivers in healthcare and elderly-care facilities with robots of human and animal forms. These are complex and difficult issues and they are deeply connected with important policy discussions in education, healthcare, welfare, law, and politics. Technology and Social Imagination Research Group aims to enrich public discussion on how to engage with technologies in imagining better societies.

Research Projects

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    Cultures of Robotics in South Korea and Europe
    National Research Foundation of Korea 2018.12 - 2022.11 Technology and Social Imagination

    How can we develop socially acceptable and culturally appropriate frameworks with which to incorporate robots in diverse institutional settings such as healthcare, education, and welfare? What kinds of problems arise when social robots are put into different cultural settings and how can we respond to them?

    Researcher(s): Chihyung Jeon, Heesun Shin, Miryang Kang

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    Gaps in Science, Technology, and Society
    KAIST 2022.05 - 2022.12 Technology and Social Imagination

    How can we live along with the inevitable gaps in science, technology, and society? How can science and technology on gaps help us to design a safer world?

    Researcher(s): Chihyung Jeon, Heesun Shin

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    Skyscraper, Carbon Monitoring Outpost
    National Research Foundation of Korea 2022.06 - 2025.05 Technology and Social Imagination

    How accurate do we know about our own contribution to climate change? How can we refine the knowledge on anthropogenic carbon emission through the direct measurement of CO2 at urban skyscrapers?

    Researcher(s): Chihyung Jeon

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    Policy Research on Safety and Quality of Life of Older Drivers Based on Big Data Analytics
    National Research Foundation of Korea 2020.07 - 2023.07 Technology and Social Imagination

    How does the introduction of self-driving cars change the mobility safety of older drivers? What are the policies, technologies, and legal measures to mitigate these emerging risks?

    Researcher(s): Chihyung Jeon

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    Emotional Intelligence Technology to Infer Human Emotion and Carry on Dialogue Accordingly
    KAIST 2016.12 - 2021.06 Technology and Social Imagination

    What is the conversation between artificial intelligence (AI chatbot) and human? Is it possible to tame AI to provide human-machine conversation reflecting ‘personal taste’? How can we consider social and ethical aspects in the development process of AI conversation system and its use?

    Researcher(s): Chihyung Jeon, Heesun Shin, Heewon Kim, Miryang Kang