Sometimes we take umbrage at what people say, even though what they said was completely inoffensive. Perhaps the encounter has triggered some trauma from our past. In such cases, we are not really dealing with the reality before us, but with demons from our own mind.
What if you could load an app on your phone that would record and map your emotional response to various things that people said to you? Eventually, as technology advances, such an app could measure such things as facial expression, vocal timbre, heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductivity, posture, pupil dilation and gaze saccades, to name just some of the many physiological indicators of mood.
With this data, your app could correlate your emotional responses with the objective reality of what was actually said to you. It could then search for and highlight discrepancies between input and response.
The resulting analysis could help you to better understand your own emotional responses, and perhaps to modify them over time. You might end up living a happier and less needlessly stressful life.
I wonder whether such an app would be popular.
In Yuval Harari’s Homo Deus, he expects such device will be distributed by health insurance companies since these information could be used to reduce the medical cost of the health insurance companies. These companies will be multi-national companies and governs the large amount of capital. Some of the countries will be controlled by such companies and will have a law to wear such device. You cannot remove it by a law. This device could also listen and provides a lot of information to the companies. Harari expects not so many people against such device since nowadays people give up most precious and variable information, privacy information, to watch cat’s video or see their friends. If it reduces health insurance cost, who rejects that. And if it reduces health insurance cost more, who rejects to someone listen what you say?… I enjoyed the Harari’s books.
Good point. There is no technological reason that we need to give up our privacy to have the benefit of such technologies.
But in a saner world where proper crypto-security is used to help you control access to your own data, just don’t expect the app to be free. You get what you pay for.