Scientists at MIT's Media Lab are developing a wearable device they say is capable of helping people read the subtlest, most nuanced emotions in another person by tracking the movements of that person's eyebrows, lips, and other facial features.
Eventually, ...a tiny camera will be mounted to a pair of glasses or a baseball cap, and the wearer will be alerted by a hand-held computer when the person on the other side of the conversation is bored, annoyed, or confused.
This device is intended to be used by people with autism who can't pick up emotional cues in others. But I can think of plenty of non-autistic people who could benefit from this thing too.
I'm always amazed at how oblivious some people can be. The other day I was doing registration for a seminar. The last person I registered was a fat dude eating a corn muffin, pieces of which he knocked flat-handed back into his gullet the way people in movies pop pills; crumbs bounced off his fat belly onto the floor. He complained about various things for no less than ten minutes (not an exaggeration -- the seminar started and he was in no hurry to get in there), and preceding every bullet-point of complaint he said, "PS."
"...And PS, the guy in the back asked a lot of stupid questions, too. PS, I think the seminar should've been in Marlboro instead of Boston."
I sat there agog at the cartoonish nature of this man. Much of his complaining involved legal issues and recent court decisions of which I had zero knowledge. Was he not able to interpret my emotional cues and realize that his listener 1) didn't care about his commentary on other members of the class, and 2) didn't know anything about the current state of our society's judicial affairs and thus didn't care about his bitching about it?
PS, somebody buy this guy an emotion detector.
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