Last week, I stood in the cramped office of a Sand Hill Road venture capital firm, staring through Google Glass eyewear at an 18-year-old with a blank expression.
In the display above my right eye, the word "neutral" appeared. Then he cracked a wide smile and the word changed to "happy."
The young man with plenty of reasons to grin is Catalin Voss, an entrepreneur and Stanford student from Germany who has been working on iPhone apps since he was 12 - that is to say, pretty much since there has been an iPhone.
Now, with a small team of mostly fellow students, he's working on emotion-recognition tools that could improve education and training by monitoring engagement. But there are other interesting use cases as well: Voss, who has a cousin with autism, thinks the Glass app could help those with difficulty discerning emotions to interact in more natural ways, easing their path through the world.
The company, Sension, based in the Menlo Park offices of Highland Capital for the summer, is among a handful of businesses making strides in emotion-recognition technology. The tools can analyze facial expressions and vocal patterns for signs of specific emotions: Happiness, sadness, anger, frustration and more.
There's a broad array of potential applications, including potentially creepy commercial ones: If my TV knows I'm feeling depressed, might it load up an ad for fast food? Read more >>
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) challenged Al Gore’s motives for supporting climate change legislation including his links to a firm that will make millions from cap and trade:
Blackburn noted Gore’s role as partner in Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm that invests in technology to address global warming.
Blackburn asked Gore if he stood to benefit financially from cap-and-trade legislation, which would force companies to reduce carbon emissions. Companies would likely turn to the kinds of technologies Kleiner Perkins helps develop.
“This bill is going to fundamentally change the way America works.” Given the magnitude of those changes, I think it’s really important that no suspicion or shadow fall on the foremost advocates of climate change legislation. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of clear the air about your motives and maybe set the record straight.”
Transcript:
BLACKBURN: I’ve got an article from October 8th, the New York Times Magazine about a firm called Kleiner Perkins. A capital firm called Kleiner Perkins. Are you aware of that company?
GORE: (LAUGHS) Well yes, I’m a partner at Kleiner Perkins.
BLACKBURN: So you’re a partner at Kleiner Perkins. OK. Now they have invested about a billion dollars in 40 companies that are going to benefit from cap and trade legislation. So is the legislation that we’re discussing here today, is that something you are going to personally benefit from?
GORE: I believe that the transition to a green economy is good for our economy and good for all of us. And I have invested in it. But every penny that I have made, I have put right into a non-profit, the Alliance for Climate Protection, to spread awareness about why we have to take on this challenge. And Congresswoman, if you’re, if you believe the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.
BLACKBURN: I’m not making accusations. I’m asking questions that have been asked of me. And individuals, constituents that were seeking a point of clarity–
GORE: I understand exactly what you’re doing, Congresswoman. Everybody here does.
BLACKBURN: Well, are, you know, are you willing to divest yourself of any profit? Does all of it go to a not-for-profit that is an educational not-for-profit.
GORE: Every penny that I have made has gone to it. Every penny from the movie, from the book, from any investments in renewable energy. I’ve been willing to put my money where my mouth is. Do you think there’s something wrong with being active in business in this country?
The Heritage Foundation has more on Al Gore’s testimony here.
I blogged about the increases we can expect in energy prices here.
So much that last August Tipper and Al Gore used twice as much electricity in their two-building property as an average U.S. household uses in an entire year, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a think tank, reported Tuesday.
Public power and gas bills turned up by the group show that the man behind the Oscar-winning global warming wakeup documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” uses much more overall carbon-based fuel than the average American, spending thousands of dollars a month on electricity and gas.
