We're very good at reading faces - that tiny eyebrow flicker that says, "you're treading on my toe", or the minuscule grimace of "my hovercraft is full of eels". But obviously, our lives could be better, with Technology (tm).
We need little flexible loincloths, with e-ink displays on them, linked up (via a signal processing unit) to a simple ECG machine/electrodes in one's hat-band/other sensors of one's choosing. The loincloths would then project some rudimentary indicators of our internal state to the outside world - but in a discreet location, so that the merest glance would be immediately obvious, and highly personal. 'Are you looking at my...inner state?' Much like faces, we'd soon become adept at reading the merest flicker on the laps of our loved ones, giving us a heightened range of emotional expression and understanding, resulting in nirvana-like calm, world peace, and spontaneous outbreaks of puppies and rainbows.-- navel-gazer, Apr 01 2008 Color-Changing Clothes Could Match Mood, Surroundings http://news.nationa...1_thread_color.html [Ander, Apr 03 2008] [marked-for-deletion] magic (any evidence that an ECG machine can be used to determine someone's 'inner state'?)-- hippo, Apr 01 2008 "Is that the battery pack for your ECG, or are you just pleased to see me?"-- coprocephalous, Apr 01 2008 Okay, I'm being over-generous when I say 'inner state', maybe - but I'd argue that heart rate often has some correspondence with internal experience. Who knows how good we might get at reading ECGs? At an extreme end, we could spend all day inside fMRI scanners and have the loincloths project the output of our visual cortices - but that sounds way less convenient. And I dunno, we might end up all Uri-Geller magnetised.
As a side note, perhaps The Duke's LED scrotum implants could work as adjunct displays!-- navel-gazer, Apr 01 2008 So we're talking about a mood jock strap here?-- phoenix, Apr 01 2008 Baked: Doesn't that thing under the loincloth already project a rudimentary indicator of our internal state?-- ldischler, Apr 01 2008 So wait is this for women too?-- MisterQED, Apr 01 2008 Well, I was thinking something like a little sporran, or a tiny apron to be honest - but non-gender-specific. I won't pretend to have laboured over the idea for many hours, though :)-- navel-gazer, Apr 01 2008 I thought it would simply measure the level of excitement from the genitali. That would be easy. But I'm kinda glad to keep that sort of info to myself thank you very much.-- zeno, Apr 02 2008 :\-- baconbrain, Apr 02 2008 //measure the level of excitement from the genitali//
Pressure gauge? Wet and dry thermometer?-- Ling, Apr 02 2008 //Wet and dry thermometer?//
Trouser barometer?-- theleopard, Apr 02 2008 random, halfbakery