Visualizing personality

One day, after we live in a world where cybernetic information from the cloud is superimposed on our view of other people, somebody is going to get the bright idea to superimpose mood and personality information on top of our view of other people.

There are good things and bad things about this. Among the good things, such a capability could provide a useful caution. If somebody has a short temper, or is sensitive to certain topics, or is just coming out of a bad encounter that could throw them off their game, you might be able to get fair warning, and adjust accordingly how you interact with that person.

Among the bad things, this sort of capability is prone to social media hacking. Your view of somebody might become colored by some person or group of people who dislike them, and are therefore prone to providing an unfairly negative or otherwise biased view of them.

And then of course there is the question of privacy.

I am quite confident that the sort of capability I am describing will be possible sometime in the near future. But I am not at all sure that it is something that will make our world a better place. Maybe we will end up collectively deciding to opt out of this particular superpower.

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