Technology Ticks

What do you do if someone hogs/interrupts/hijacks conversation but you're too polite to tell him to bug off?

Well, there's help.

Dr Alex Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has created software programs "that tell speakers whether they tend to interrupt others, for example, or whether they dominate meetings with monologues, or appear inattentive when others are talking."

In order to create a database for his programs, Alex Pentland uses "Reality Mining" where he equipped "people in banks, universities and other places with customised smartphones or thin badges packed with sensors to pick up data on the timing, energy and variability of their speech."

Perhaps -- I cross my fingers and toes -- we'll see these programs soon.

Read the full article at New York Times.
(Damn good newspaper!!!)