Reality mining

Here is yet another piece of technology that listens in to its surrounding environment to produce “minute-by-minute, fine-grained data on whether you are talking, whom you prefer to talk with, what your tone is, and if you interrupt” which can be used to improve your communication skills and change your tactics, including those that lead to unproductive workplace dynamics... It could be an interesting training /diagnostic tool for corporates - but i question weather it would really lead people to change the way they are?

You May Soon Know if You’re Hogging the Discussion

PEOPLE who want to improve their communication skills may one day have an unusual helper: software programs that analyze the tone, turn-taking behavior and other qualities of a conversation. The programs would then tell the speakers whether they tend to interrupt others, for example, or whether they dominate meetings with monologues, or appear inattentive when others are talking.

The inventor of this technology is Alex Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has developed cellphone-like gadgets to listen to people as they chat, and computer programs that sift through these conversational cadences, studying communication signals that lie beneath the words.

If commercialized, such tools could help users better handle many subtleties of face-to-face and group interactions — or at least stop hogging the show at committee meetings.

Thanks to NY Times. The full article can be read here.