close

Boring! Watch watches your language

3 min read

I’m old school. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Likewise, I thought there was no need for a new way to let people know they’re boring you with their supposedly scintillating repartee. We already have plenty. Take your pick:

1) Repeatedly looking at your watch

2) Turning your back and walking away

3) Dropping your head to one shoulder and snoring

4) Feigning death

5) Divorce

But most people, seeking to be nice – and to avoid having the speaker, if interrupted, pull a Glock G30S from its svelte concealed carry holster – will go to extreme lengths to avoid resorting to one of these acts. Therefore, it’s relatively easy to find yourself trapped at your 50-year high school reunion listening while the guy you avoided all through 12th grade regales you with the overlong tale of the time his 18-year-old wife chased a wallaby into the brambles while they were honeymooning in the Australian Outback, at which point she became entangled and was carried off by a dingo before he could pull his Glock G30S to save her and – holy crap! – is that Debbie Schwartz from biology? Geez, did she gain weight!

Man, that’s annoying! Like reading a run-on sentence.

Anyway … because we are terminally nice and technologically dependent these days, I guess I am not surprised that Massachusetts Institute of Technology is working on a watch that can alert you if you are boring. Add it to your Amazon wishlist, right after the Welt Smart Belt, which tells you if you’ve gained weight, and HAPIFork, which warns you that you’re eating too fast. Along with PaTOOTie, a belt-worn gas sensor that alerts you if you’ve eaten too many beans.

OK, I made up that last one.

But MIT’s brainchild is decidedly real, although as yet unnamed because it’s a few years away from being marketed. (A couple of suggestions: “Gabstopper” and “Borometer”) The MIT watch uses artificial intelligence to monitor the wearer’s movement, heart rate and blood pressure. It also identifies boring conversation by listening to voice pitch, detecting long pauses and tracking vocabulary to decide if the speaker is repeating himself. The watch sends data to a linked smartphone, which buzzes to alert the speaker that it’s time to move on. MIT claims it does so with 83 percent accuracy – while avoiding the party-pooping faux paus of shouting, “Shut yer pie hole!”

Project co-developer Tuka Al Hanais told the London Express that users will have “an intelligent social coach right in their pocket – a judgmental, objective, personal social coach.” Now, except for the “objective” and “pocket” parts, this description sounds a lot like a marriage to me. But, although a price has not yet been set, the MIT watch has to be cheaper than spending $150 per hour on a marriage counselor who cheerfully says, after 45 minutes, “Our hour is up!”

I don’t know. Maybe the MIT watch will be a real boon to society. After all, didn’t the scientific quest for a powdered substitute for orange juice give us Tang?

Never mind.

In my book, MIT’s brainiacs could have better served the public by inventing a watch that can analyze the speech patterns of politicians.

Imagine … “Demagoguery!” emanating from millions of pockets.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $3.75/week.

Subscribe Today