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Jewish World Review August 25, 2005 / 20 Av, 5765 No good can come from Jerk-O-Meter By David Grimes
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Have you ever suspected that your spouse or co-worker was a disengaged, self-absorbed boob but you lacked quantifiable proof?
Well, you may soon be able to get the goods on him or her thanks to a gizmo called the "Jerk-O-Meter." Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing software for cell phones that would analyze speech patterns and voice tones to rate people — on a scale of 0 to 100 percent — on how engaged they are in a conversation.
As someone who has been deeply suspicious of every technological breakthrough since the invention of the clock radio, I fear that the Jerk-O-Meter will add to, rather than subtract from, the stress of modern life.
Some conversations are so mind-numbingly boring that your head would explode if you devoted more than a small fraction of your attention to them. For example, some of my golfing companions believe that there is nothing on earth that I would rather hear than a blow-by-blow account of the round they just played (and that I just witnessed). By the time they get to "And then on number three I hit a six iron — no, wait, a seven iron ... no, I was wrong, it was a six — into the left-hand bunker but my lie was pretty good so ..." my brain has already wandered off to more important things, such as cheeseburgers and beer.
Golf is irritating enough without some sweat-soaked hacker waving a Jerk-O-Meter in your face and berating you for only being 5 percent engaged in his dreary monologue.
Similarly, I think it's safe to say that there are occasions when spouses don't hang on every word of what their partner is saying. I admit that when my wife tells me about her day, my mind sometimes wanders off to something more riveting like, say, the Geico commercial on TV.
"Have you heard a word I've said?" my wife, the teacher, will demand angrily.
"Of course, dear," I'll lie. "You said you had a good day and all your students were well-behaved and nothing out of the ordinary happened."
"You don't remember me telling you about the fire?" she will say. "Or the 200 students who came down with food poisoning and had to be taken to the hospital? Or the snake I found in my briefcase?"
I don't think I'll need a Jerk-O-Meter to know I'll be sleeping on the couch.
The Jerk-O-Meter would also be a tremendous annoyance at office meetings, the place
where employees go to learn how to sleep with their eyes open.
In fact, I don't see any good that could come from a Jerk-O-Meter.
We don't need a machine to tell us what we already know.
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JWR contributor David Grimes is a columnist for The Sarasota Herald Tribune. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Sarasota Herald Tribune |
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