No need for emotional intelligence anymore: an app called Moodies will just tell you how you feel. The Wall Street Journal reports that the voice-recognition app uses some magic algorithm (presumably the same one used by dollar-store mood rings) to analyze patterns in your pitch, timing, volume, pauses, and energy. Feeling confused about feelings? Speak into a phone’s mic and the app will produce an emotional state for you. And then it will assign a fun emoticon to express said state to your friends via Facebook and Twitter.
This is just the first in a cache of digital mood rings that are being developed. While Moodies is all fun and games, others are being developed for horrible, dystopian-sounding things like “honesty maintenance” for human resource executives (try lying about that sick day now), and perhaps for manipulative marketing purposes.
Right now the apps are simple, but just think of the potential! One day you will be able to finally determine when your passive aggressive friend is angry at you, or get a read on your boss’ emotional state before asking to take vacation days. But until technology advances enough for that to happen, as long as the apps can tell the difference between angry and hangry, the world will be a better place.
