PRESENCE Call for Papers
Special Issue on Legal, Ethical, and
Policy Issues Associated with
Wearable Computers, Virtual
Environments, and Computer Mediated
Reality
Guest Editors: Woodrow Barfield, Steve
Mann, Ian Kerr, and Rita Lauria
Recent advances in the technologies
associated with the development of
wearable computing, virtual
environments, and mediated
(augmented, dimensioned, or otherwise
computer-modified) realities have led to
interesting legal, policy, and ethical
issues. As evidence of the emerging
interest in this area, the term
"cyborglaw" has already appeared in
numerous events, workshops, and
symposia.
Questions of interest for the special
edition include: Should an artificially
intelligent system represented within a
virtual environment by an avatar be
afforded the rights of legal personhood,
be able to contract, or be liable for
errors, in the same way as humans or
abstract entities such as corporations that
already enjoy such rights? Are the legal,
ethical, or policy issues different when
the intelligence arises through having a
human being in the feedback loop of a
computational process, i.e. as with
Humanistic Intelligence (HI)? Should
humans that wear computing (sometimes
termed cyborgs, or cybernetic
organisms) be recognized as legal
entities, and afforded special protections
like those who wear prosthesis? What
liabilities should be incurred by those
who disrupt the functioning of a person's
prosthesis or wearable computer?
Papers that discuss and describe current
legal, policy, and ethical issues and case
law associated with technology in the
design and use of wearable computing,
virtual and mediated (augmented/
dimensioned/modified) reality
environments, are especially sought.
Topics include, but are not limited to: