Bits: If Our Gadgets Could Measure Our Emotions

“Honey, we know,” my mom replied. “But it should!”

She had a point. After all, computers and technology are becoming only smarter, faster and more intuitive. Artificial intelligence is creeping into our lives at a steady pace. Devices and apps can anticipate what we need, sometimes even before we realize it ourselves. So why shouldn’t they understand our feelings? If emotional reactions were measured, they could be valuable data points for better design and development. Emotional artificial intelligence, also called affective computing, may be on its way.

But should it be? After all, we’re already struggling to cope with the always-on nature of the devices in our lives. Yes, those gadgets would be more efficient if they could respond when we are frustrated, bored or too busy to be interrupted, yet they would also be intrusive in ways we can’t even fathom today. It sounds like a science-fiction movie, and in some ways it is. Much of this technology is still in its early stages, but it’s inching closer to reality.

Companies like Affectiva, a start-up spun out of the M.I.T. Media Lab, are working on software that trains computers to recognize human emotions based on their facial expressions and physiological responses. A company called Beyond Verbal, which has just raised close to $3 million in venture financing, is working on a software tool that can analyze speech and, based on the tone of a person’s voice, determine whether it indicates qualities like arrogance or annoyance, or both.

Microsoft recently revealed the Xbox One, the next-generation version of its flagship game console, which includes an update of Kinect, its motion-tracking device that lets people control games by moving their hands and bodies. The new Kinect, which goes on sale later this year, can be controlled by voice but is not programmed with software to detect emotions in those interactions.

But it does include a higher-definition camera capable of tracking fine skeletal and muscular changes in the body and face. The machine can already detect the physics behind bodily movements, and calculate the force behind a punch or the height of a jump. In addition, one of the Kinect’s new sensors uses infrared technology to track a player’s heartbeats. That could eventually help the company detect when a player’s pulse is racing during a fitness contest — and from excitement after winning a game. For avid gamers like myself, the possibilities for more immersive, interactive play are mind-boggling.

Albert Penello, a senior director of product planning at Microsoft, says the company intends to use that data to give designers insight into how people feel when playing its games — a kind of feedback loop that can help shape future offerings and experiences. He says Microsoft takes privacy very seriously and will require game developers to receive explicit permission from Xbox One owners before using the data.

Microsoft says games could even adapt in real time to players’ physical response, amping up the action if they aren’t stimulated enough, or tamping it down if it’s too scary. “We are trying to open up game designers to the mind of the players,” Mr. Penello said. “Are you scared or are you laughing? Are you paying attention and when are you not?”

Eventually, he said, the technology embedded in the Kinect camera could be used for a broader range of applications, including tracking reactions while someone is looking at ads or shopping online, in the hope of understanding what is or isn’t capturing the person’s interest. But he said those applications were not a top priority for the company. (Some companies have experimented with technologies like eye-tracking software to see what parts of commercials draw the most attention from viewers.)

Online media companies like Netflix, Spotify and Amazon already have access to real-time consumer sentiment, knowing which chapters, parts of songs, movies and TV shows people love, hate, skip and like to rewatch. Such data was used to engineer the popular online Netflix series “House of Cards,” whose creators had access to data about people’s television viewing habits.

So it is not much of a leap to imagine Kinect-like sensors, and tools like the ones Affectiva and Beyond Verbal are developing, being used to create new entertainment, Web browsing and search experiences.

The possibilities go far beyond that. Prerna Gupta, chief product officer at Smule, a development studio that makes mobile games, spoke about the subject at South by Southwest, the conference in Austin, Tex., in March. She called her talk “Apps of the Future: Instagram for Cyborgs,” and gazed far into the future of potential applications.

Disruptions: Even the Tech Elites Leave Gadgets Behind

Nick Bilton/The New York Times The writer’s dinner guests place their smartphones in a stack in the middle of the table.

If you were to meet 32-year-old Robin Sloan of San Francisco, you might think him a Luddite unable to get his head around new technologies. He owns an old Nokia phone with one main application: making phone calls. He takes notes using a pen and paper notepad. And he reads books printed on paper.

But Mr. Sloan is far from a Luddite. He used to work at Twitter as a media manager, teaching news outlets to use the hottest social media tools. Before that he was with Current TV as an online strategist, inventing the future of digital journalism.

Yet last year, as he set out to write his first book, “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” he found his iPhone and other technologies were getting in the way of his productivity, so he simply got rid of them. “I found it was more important and more productive for me to be daydreaming and jotting down notes,” he said. “I needed my idle minutes to contribute to the story I was doing, not checking my e-mail, or checking tweets.”

Even in Silicon Valley, Mr. Sloan has company.

As every aspect of our daily lives has become hyperconnected, some people on the cutting edge of tech are trying their best to push it back a few feet. Keeping their phone in their pocket. Turning off their home Wi-Fi at night or on weekends. And reading books on paper, rather than pixels.

I’ve experienced this, too.

Two years ago, when the iPhone and iPad were spiking in popularity, when I dined with other technology bloggers and reporters we enthusiastically passed our phones around the table, showing off the latest app or funny YouTube clip.

Now, even as our gadgets can hold more apps and stream faster videos, when I’m at dinner with technologists we play a new game. Attendees happily place their smartphones in a stack in the middle of the table, and the first person who touches his or her phone before the meal is over has to pay the bill.

Some couples who work in tech seem to be trying to step back the most.

“At least once a month my wife and I jump in our car and drive until cell service drops off (yes, this is possible) and spend the weekend engaged with all things analog,” Evan Sharp, a founder of Pinterest, said — on e-mail. “We read, we walk all over the California hills, we cook, we meet people who don’t work in technology.”

Other couples have told me of a “no gadgets in the bedroom” rule. (Kindles are sometimes an exception.) Some say they leave their phones at home when they go for Sunday brunch. Rather than take a picture of their bacon and eggs to post to Instagram, they can now enjoy each other’s company, and do that strange thing called talking.

There could even be a business model in products that encourage us to step away from our gadgets.

Last Tuesday, Penguin Press published “The Pocket Scavenger,” a book both physical and digital that encourages readers to go on an unusual scavenger hunt, collecting random objects, drawing and smudging on the book’s pages, then documenting them later with a smartphone.

“We’re not going to get rid of technology,” said Keri Smith, the author. “I feel like we’ve lost touch with noticing smells and tactile sensations, and I’d just like to offer some kind of antidote to what’s out there.”

As for Mr. Sloan, who has since published his book, he said his break from technology was a resounding success. He still checks his e-mail, but not while he’s getting coffee with someone or going for a stroll.

Although he isn’t rushing off to buy the next iPhone, he said he wouldn’t rule it out. But he would use such a device differently than he did before downgrading his cellphone.

“It sounds silly because we all used to do this all the time, but after getting rid of my smartphone I am now so much more comfortable just leaving the house without any phone at all,” he said. “I feel like I kind of learned how to do that again, and I would do the same thing if I had a fancy new smartphone too.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Tool Kit: Gadgets to Help Tend a Garden

Picture a tiny drone that arises from your vegetable garden to shoo away hungry deer. Or maybe a houseplant that, when you’re away, meanders through your rooms like a cat following a sunbeam. Or one that posts a request for water on Twitter.

The future is knocking at the door of home gardening. And, if some do-it-yourselfers have their way, there is no aspect of nature that can’t be improved with a rechargeable motor and a sensor or two.

Take, for example, the VegiBee. Bill Whaley, a former department store executive living in St. Louis, said he invented the device after a disappointing tomato yield.

Mr. Whaley concluded that the problem was pollination, and quickly set out to improve on the bees, which were clearly remiss.

Looking a little like an electric toothbrush, the VegiBee’s wand is held close to a flower on a tomato plant. The tiny vibrations — 44,000 a minute — gently shake the pollen into the plastic spoon that comes with the package. You dip the female part of another flower into the pollen. Vibrate, dip, repeat.

It does the trick, Mr. Whaley said. His harvest increased 38 percent and he recently put a rechargeable model on the market for $50.

Would the average gardener want to take all that trouble? Maybe.

Mr. Whaley said some determined gardeners have been performing a similar manual pollination for years using electric toothbrushes. The VegiBee, though, is better at shaking off the pollen because of its quick vibrations, he claims.

Gardeners love to dig in the dirt, but how can it be completely savored, you may ask, without spreadsheets full of sweet data? Garden stores have answered that call with an array of gadgets that test soil for moisture and acidity levels.

The Rapitest 4-Way Analyzer, for instance, not only measures moisture and pH levels, but also determines whether to add fertilizer and what the sunlight level is in a particular spot in the garden. It’s about $30 online or in stores. Or try a digital rain gauge. Digital gauges used to be so expensive that only true weather zealots bought them. “But they’ve gotten cheaper and cheaper as time went on,” said Matt Glenn, vice president for business development for Headwind Consumer Products in Syracuse, Neb.

These rain gauges are impressive. They are wireless and track rainfall by the day, week, month or year. They also have thermometers for indoor and outdoor temperatures.

Why stop there? Once you have data, why not share it on a social network of other like-minded gardeners?

Enter Future Tech Farms, the high-tech gardening brainchild of Brian Falther and his business partner, Austin Lawrence. The two mechanical engineers are trying to develop a network of indoor gardening pods, hooked up via phone or home Wi-Fi, to a social pod network, which would share information on the most effective growing conditions.

“The whole goal is to create a food production format for the world that is ecologically sustainable, energy sustainable and carbon neutral,” said Mr. Falther, a 2010 graduate of Kettering University in Flint, Mich., where Mr. Lawrence is a senior. “I don’t know why everyone isn’t doing this.”

Why indeed? The small self-contained pods would collect data on water temperature, light, pH levels and such. Then the information on what works best could be shared on the network, making it easier for newcomers and participants to garden, Mr. Falther said.

The two have more than $30,000 in start-up money and are hoping that someday their pods will be as familiar a sight in homes as refrigerators and televisions.

Outdoors, gardeners are constantly battling voracious creatures. It never fails that, just when you’re ready to pick that perfect tomato, a squirrel snatches it away.

But there is some high-tech help for that too. The Garden Defense Electronic Owl, made by Easy Gardener, is placed on a fence post, and when a sensor in the battery-operated plastic bird detects a woodland creature, the owl’s head turns to fix the intruder with a murderous stare intended to frighten it away.

The owl, about $40, is not the only device meant to scare on the market, but it may be the creepiest. Several brands of sensor-driven, motion-activated sprinklers are also available, with names like the ScareCrow, Yard Enforcer and Spray Away, ranging in price from $49 to about $140.

But why settle for a threatening turn of the head or a simple squirt of water when you could have a quadricopter drone?

At the University of Victoria in British Columbia, engineering students charged with the problem of deterring garden pests came up with the Garden Gnome Drone, a small but noisy machine that rises off its landing pad when infrared sensors detect an intruder, then flies a quick pattern around the garden before settling back down in its place.

The students didn’t test their device to see if it deterred garden animals, said Chandra Beaveridge, who was one of five on the design team. But theoretically, any wandering raccoon would drop its ear of corn and flee in terror at the eerie sight. The idea is to scare creatures away from the garden without harm or the use of water, she said.

Tool Kit: Gadgets to Help Tend a Garden

Picture a tiny drone that arises from your vegetable garden to shoo away hungry deer. Or maybe a houseplant that, when you’re away, meanders through your rooms like a cat following a sunbeam. Or one that posts a request for water on Twitter.

The future is knocking at the door of home gardening. And, if some do-it-yourselfers have their way, there is no aspect of nature that can’t be improved with a rechargeable motor and a sensor or two.

Take, for example, the VegiBee. Bill Whaley, a former department store executive living in St. Louis, said he invented the device after a disappointing tomato yield.

Mr. Whaley concluded that the problem was pollination, and quickly set out to improve on the bees, which were clearly remiss.

Looking a little like an electric toothbrush, the VegiBee’s wand is held close to a flower on a tomato plant. The tiny vibrations — 44,000 a minute — gently shake the pollen into the plastic spoon that comes with the package. You dip the female part of another flower into the pollen. Vibrate, dip, repeat.

It does the trick, Mr. Whaley said. His harvest increased 38 percent and he recently put a rechargeable model on the market for $50.

Would the average gardener want to take all that trouble? Maybe.

Mr. Whaley said some determined gardeners have been performing a similar manual pollination for years using electric toothbrushes. The VegiBee, though, is better at shaking off the pollen because of its quick vibrations, he claims.

Gardeners love to dig in the dirt, but how can it be completely savored, you may ask, without spreadsheets full of sweet data? Garden stores have answered that call with an array of gadgets that test soil for moisture and acidity levels.

The Rapitest 4-Way Analyzer, for instance, not only measures moisture and pH levels, but also determines whether to add fertilizer and what the sunlight level is in a particular spot in the garden. It’s about $30 online or in stores. Or try a digital rain gauge. Digital gauges used to be so expensive that only true weather zealots bought them. “But they’ve gotten cheaper and cheaper as time went on,” said Matt Glenn, vice president for business development for Headwind Consumer Products in Syracuse, Neb.

These rain gauges are impressive. They are wireless and track rainfall by the day, week, month or year. They also have thermometers for indoor and outdoor temperatures.

Why stop there? Once you have data, why not share it on a social network of other like-minded gardeners?

Enter Future Tech Farms, the high-tech gardening brainchild of Brian Falther and his business partner, Austin Lawrence. The two mechanical engineers are trying to develop a network of indoor gardening pods, hooked up via phone or home Wi-Fi, to a social pod network, which would share information on the most effective growing conditions.

“The whole goal is to create a food production format for the world that is ecologically sustainable, energy sustainable and carbon neutral,” said Mr. Falther, a 2010 graduate of Kettering University in Flint, Mich., where Mr. Lawrence is a senior. “I don’t know why everyone isn’t doing this.”

Why indeed? The small self-contained pods would collect data on water temperature, light, pH levels and such. Then the information on what works best could be shared on the network, making it easier for newcomers and participants to garden, Mr. Falther said.

The two have more than $30,000 in start-up money and are hoping that someday their pods will be as familiar a sight in homes as refrigerators and televisions.

Outdoors, gardeners are constantly battling voracious creatures. It never fails that, just when you’re ready to pick that perfect tomato, a squirrel snatches it away.

But there is some high-tech help for that too. The Garden Defense Electronic Owl, made by Easy Gardener, is placed on a fence post, and when a sensor in the battery-operated plastic bird detects a woodland creature, the owl’s head turns to fix the intruder with a murderous stare intended to frighten it away.

The owl, about $40, is not the only device meant to scare on the market, but it may be the creepiest. Several brands of sensor-driven, motion-activated sprinklers are also available, with names like the ScareCrow, Yard Enforcer and Spray Away, ranging in price from $49 to about $140.

But why settle for a threatening turn of the head or a simple squirt of water when you could have a quadricopter drone?

At the University of Victoria in British Columbia, engineering students charged with the problem of deterring garden pests came up with the Garden Gnome Drone, a small but noisy machine that rises off its landing pad when infrared sensors detect an intruder, then flies a quick pattern around the garden before settling back down in its place.

The students didn’t test their device to see if it deterred garden animals, said Chandra Beaveridge, who was one of five on the design team. But theoretically, any wandering raccoon would drop its ear of corn and flee in terror at the eerie sight. The idea is to scare creatures away from the garden without harm or the use of water, she said.