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Software to Make Sure You Are Paying Attention and Interested
Are you participating in that conference call or are you typing emails and talking with officemates? The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has proposed a piece of software that can answer this question for others. The “Jerk-O-Meter” measures the stress levels in your voice and rates you between 0 and 100 to let you know how annoying you are being and your interest level in the conversation.
The idea is based on a MIT paper called “Voices of Attraction” that analyzed 60 five-minute speed-dating sessions and an unpublished study in the area. The research from the speed-dating sessions showed that verbal and non-verbal clues could be used to gauge a person’s level of interest in the conversation.
The software could be used by companies during negotiations to get the edge on their counterparts, by lecturers at conferences to keep the crowd engaged or even by individuals to make sure they are giving a situation the adequate attention.
Project leader Anmol Madan, a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab, and his advisers–Alex Pentland, director of the Human Dynamics Research Group at the Media Lab and Carl Marci, director of Social Neuroscience at the Lab have formed IMetrico to capitalize on the research and begin development. There is a long way to go from preliminary research to a working production version of the software, but the area is of great interest and one that we will continue to watch.
They already make devices that can accurately assess the level of attention one is giving. They are called wives.
Amen Clay!
That aside, any public speaker that doesnt have the skill to notice they have lost an audience, needs to find a different career. Even on a personal phone call if the other person is bored, the speaker should have the social skills to figure this out…. Now what would be an interested application is a Jerk-O-Meter for IM/Text messaging…No idea how you would implement it tho, but it would be nifty to be able to accurately guage emotion/attention thru non verbal electronic communication.