A scary article on Wired, Mood Ring Measured in Megahertz, about technology that is being developed by the military to monitor physical & emotional conditions in team members engaging in high-risk decision making processes. For military applications, it sounds alright, but they talk more about it being used in the workplace, which is fucking SPOOKY and awful seeming.

An excerpt:

Here’s how it would work: You’re in a meeting, and each person in attendance is hooked up to a computer that’s monitoring their perspiration and heartbeat, reading their facial expressions and head motions, analyzing their voice tones and then presenting them with a running account of how they are feeling. This information will also be transmitted to everyone else in the meeting.

Talking too much? A pop-up window appears on the screen to tell you to shut up. Feeling edgy? A message reminds you to calm down. Got a big account or project to assign? Scan the feed to see which employee is feeling the perkiest that morning.

Basically, the people making this stuff claim that it will never be used in civilian workplaces, cause it’s just too weird.

Actually, I think its highly probable that sort of system would be incorporated, on some level, into certain kinds of work environments, cause of the increased automation and worker-monitoring it would allow, without having to even bother with human interaction.

With that in mind, check out this great article one of Aron’s friends wrote about working someplace where the entire thing practically was run by an automated computer system monitoring employees. It’s called “The Wrong Robot“.