Fans of the movie Blade Runner, widely acknowledged here in the Dyscern World HQ Labs as being the Best Movie Ever Made, may remember the Voight-Kampff machine. This was a device invented by author Philip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It is a polygraph-like device used to detect emotional states -- specifically, empathy -- by registering bodily changes such as respiration, eye movement, and blush response. The Voight-Kampff machine was used to identify replicants, or androids, who supposedly had no capacity for human empathy.
Now then, real-world emotion-detecting technology trace back through
mood rings of the 1970s all the way to primitive lie detectors in the
19th century. (Really.) Thought you might be interested in a quick
update. The Exmocare BT2 is a wristwatch-sized device designed to
monitor the emotional state of a subject. It monitors heart rate, heart
rate variability, skin conductance, skin temperature, and relative
movement. The BT2 transmits monitoring data wirelessly, via Bluetooth,
where it can be remotely compiled, sorted, sifted and plotted out by
the desktop Exmocare software package.
 From the Exmocare website: By interpreting an information-rich,
individually-tailored physiological context, we can determine the
emotional state of a person wearing an Exmocare device.
There are all manner of impressive charts and graphs at this point
explaining how the Exmocore system, by charting a subject's Arousal and
Valence indices, detects emotional states. A certain combination of
heart rate, conductance and temperature might indicate the subject is
stressed, or angry, etc.
Exmocare makes the pitch that being able to monitor our own emotional
conditions will mean better, happier lives. That we can wire up
ourselves or our loved ones to this system to facilitate better
awareness of our emotional selves. The art on the website tends toward childlike doodles of doctors and nurses, with lots of hearts and happy faces.
The website also notes, by-the-way, that employers
might find a use for such a system -- to better monitor its employees. Screenshots suggest a central station from which dozens of wristband-wearing employees can be centrally monitored. Dig through the FAQ and you'll that the Exmocare system is already
being used for "physiology research" at major research universities,
Fortune 100 Companies, and several government agencies.
It always makes me nervous when a company's promotional materials are officially telling me one thing, then unofficaily telling me something else. Know what I mean? Creepy.
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