Being aware: where we think the action is

The term awareness has become one of the core concepts in human (computer-) interaction. By awareness we usually try to describe a human’s capability of perception and the cognitive effort related to an apperception task as well as similar abilities of a computer system to act sensitively with respect to context. But what does it mean to be aware in or of some context? Are not all things assembled in a system affected by being in that system—being aware of it or not? What does it take to be aware and what are the consequences of being not aware? This article discusses recent paradigms of computer science in the context of philosophy of mind, psychology of perception and sociology to shed light on awareness, context, perception and affection. The conclusion that is drawn is that any observation is inherently predetermined by our model of the world: the meaning of data we collect is determined by the model assumptions under which the observer is running.