SYNAPSE Reflexive Mapper

We already live with adaptive media. Social media feeds are probably the most familiar example; they change what you see based on what you click, how long you watch, what you scroll past. The feed is not fixed but learns from your behaviour and adjusts itself to respond to you in the best way it sees useful.

This tool is about bioadaptive media—the end case of such personalisation. These are systems that go a step further; instead of watching what you do, they read what is happening inside you—heart rate, sweat, attention, or stress—and change the media content and the resulting experience in real time. A VR documentary might calm down when your pulse spikes. A training simulation might get harder when you seem too relaxed. The connection between you and the media becomes intimate, instant, and recursive.

Where is this heading? Bioadaptive media is where trends in social media and other technologies are heading, powered by the ever-expanding need for engagement, goal-oriented new media, and developments in generative artificial intelligence. Some broad questions to consider: What is the system trying to do? Who decides what counts as a good response? What happens when the goals of the system and the goals of the person using it are not the same? And ultimately—how can we start breaking these systems down to better understand, design, and evaluate them?

What this tool does: It does not tell you whether a system is good or bad, but helps you slow down and examine what the system is doing—and what the implications might be at the level of system, organisation, and society. You can use it as an exploratory, design, or evaluation tool, or for mapping out your next research study.

Reflect, enjoy, and consider leaving feedback or contacting me for collaborations.