Social Textiles Viirj Kan, Judith Amores, Katsuya Fujii, Chang Long Zhu Jin, Pattie Maes, Hiroshi Ishii

Social Textiles
The way we represent ourselves in social media is intangible. What we choose to wear is public to the world and we are aware of it. In contrast, what we post online about ourselves reaches thousands of people and generates social consequences, but it doesn’t feel that way. Is the current form of social media really making our relationships better? Current technologies are good at connecting people at a distance, but less so at connecting them within the same environment.

Social textiles embodies who you are and dynamically reflects your shared interests with people nearby. It enables you to gain access to communities of people in the physical world. It enhances social affordances by providing icebreaking interactions through wearable social messaging.
Social Textiles can serve to connect community members with niche interests, philosophical beliefs, personalities, emotional statuses and ethical views. It has the potential to enable members to bypass superficial or generic interests through “filtering” individuals, to tune social experiences towards more compatible ones.

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