Whether consciously or not, we define our relationships with technology when we create interfaces. Designers and engineers often aspire to creating technologies that are a natural expansion of human abilities: the cowboy western’s “the rider was one with the horse” or the medical world’s surgeon as one with the scalpel. But what makes these intimate relationships possible? How do current technologies virtual reality, social networks and other emerging technologies enrich the relationship between humans and technological interfaces?

The Emerging Technologies Conference 2009 at Iowa State University offers you an opportunity to share your answers to these questions. Researchers from computer science, engineering, design, psychology, MIS, or other fields related to human-computer interaction and emerging technologies are invited to come together to present peer-reviewed research that explores the latest in interface technologies.