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3399 BCE
Knapping
3.39 million years ago, a tool was found/created in Ethiopia. This was a tool that was used to kill animals and scrape meat off of bones. Was the earliest known technology. It was created with chert and granite being scraped together to form a sharp edge. -
Monkey Mirroring
Rizolatti found that specific neurons in monkeys were able to perform a mirroring task. The same neurons were active when the monkey observed as when the monkey performed, so action and observation were based on the same neurons. This answered human psychology questions, helping know more about the brain which leads to knowing how to make robots like humans. This led to a development about how to transfer those neuron responses to robots.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/mirror -
Picard's Published Research
Rosalind Picard did research about affective computing. In 1997, she completed a book that introduced her ideas on artificial intelligence. Although this is not necessarily a form of technology, she had a huge influence on where affective computing is today and was one of the first engineers to do in-depth research surrounding the topic. Her TedTalk video argued that technology can help us learn about emotions, assisting our personal wellbeing.
https://youtu.be/itikdtdbevU -
MindReader and FaceSense
According to the MIT article, Kashef says FaceSense can use cognitive mental states and real time analysis from a video to change your actions; making lighting brighter if sad or change music. MindReader device could listen to expression and predict with 88% accuracy the expression and emotion being used. These technologies shaped affective computing as they were able to successfully recognize and express a big variety of emotions, like the goal for robots.
http://trac.media.mit.edu/mindreader/ -
iCalm Wristband
One of the earliest technologies from the Emotion Communication in Autism was the iCalm. With this affective technology, the watch could track autonomic processes to aid with sleep, stress, physicality, and autism education. This was an important step in affective computing as it was able to register emotions (like the end goal of robots) and track other signals. Although it wasn't able to help in coping mechanisms, it registered changes and various emotional states.
https://bit.ly/33mwsaK -
Near Future Innovation
A new technology development I think could happen is with home devices (such as an Alexa). I believe these devices could soon be able to recognize our schedules, as Mandy did in chapter 1 of "Heart of the Machine". They could sense when it is time to open garage doors for work, automatic home locks, and other miscellaneous daily activities. With this, it could be programmable through your phone, so you could click ahead of time to "open garage door at 5:00pm". -
Far Future Innovation
In the far (far) future, I could see a form of telepathic communication being used. With this, a form of chip or technology would be inserted into our brains so it is solely our own thinking opposed to communication through headphones or something similar. Although this communication might be very far out, it could be used to express emotions (and the emotions we often hide or don't have words to describe) with others close to us.