Institute For The Future

I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you send that email

 

Suppose you manage a sales team. Of course you don't want them coming across as angry or anxious or pushy. Now suppose, instead, that you could screen the tone of your sales team's emails to make sure that they're only happy and helpful. Would you do it?

 

This isn't exactly the premise of the service Tone Check, a new Outlook plug-in developed by a former salesman, but it is close. The software won't prevent you from sending an email, but it will notify you if there's something amiss in your emails in what the company seems to be describing as "spell check...but for tone." In an interview with NPR, company founder Matt Eldridge described the service as follows:

 

 

 

Mr. MATT ELDRIDGE (Salesman): I was great at over the phone or face to face, but when it came to emails, I would come across as aggressive or pushy or harsh.

 

NORRIS (HOST): And nobody likes a pushy salesman. So Eldridge came up with the idea for a computer program that works like spell check for emotions. It's called ToneCheck and it was released last week. ToneCheck works with Microsoft Outlook scanning emails for potential problems.

 

Mr. ELDRIDGE: Consider: You misunderstood, as opposed to: You misunderstand. You know, the literal meaning is the same. But emotionally, I mean it makes you feel different.

 

SIEGEL (HOST): According to ToneCheck, at least, you misunderstood, might humiliate someone, whereas, you misunderstand, simply conveys sadness. Real human beings are behind these descriptions. Anyone can go to the site and rate sample phrases on a scale from zero to 10. The site pays five cents per rating. Though the writing tips are delivered through a computer program, Eldridge insists he's not trying to make people sound like robots.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I'm not entirely convinced that the service will ever work as advertised (Microsoft Word's grammar tool gives consistently bad advice, for example.) And, to be clear, they're offering guidance regarding the tone of your emails--the service won't stop you from sending that angry email when you need to be angry. It's simply offering advice.

 

But it's a fun exercise to imagine what a service like Tonecheck--if it does work--could do with improvements in out-of-the-box, free speech recognition software that can transcribe speech into text that my colleague Mike Liebhold highlighted a couple months ago. I mean, why stop at just examining tone in email? Why not connect a corporate customer service phone bank to some speech recognition software and to tone check--and deliver a little electric shock to any employee who makes an aggressive statement to a potential customer?

 

Okay--that might be a bit extreme.

 

But I bring up that extreme example in the context of some more down to earth thoughts having to do with self-control and health.

 

I've recently been thinking about some of the tools and strategies we can use to help us set health goals--and then effectively manage our short-term urges to reach those long-term aims. But of course, any strategy comes with a set of unintended consequences.

 

Take, for example, recent research into an experimental cocaine vaccine, which did a great job of preventing addicts from using coke by blocking the pleasure receptors for the drugs...except when addicts in the study tried to circumvent the vaccine by using ten times more coke. Or take research into the effects of botox on depression. For a while, preliminary research seemed to show that botox alleviated depression. It turns out, as more recent research is suggesting, it does this by limiting facial expressions in general--in effect, flattening out all emotions, including negative, as well as positive, ones.

 

Which brings me to a couple of more general points. The first is that as we move toward purposefully designing constraints into our lives to help us--such as emotional monitors that are supposed to guide investing strategies--we should do so cautiously. This is doubly true, I think, for more qualitative concerns--such as email tone or happiness, which are inherently slippery concepts.

 

Over the next decade, expect to see a lot more of what purports to be hard data about emotions and other sorts of qualitative states, as well as new technologies that seamlessly connect that information to our homes, offices, and gadgets. My sense is that there's a ton of opportunity in that space to improve people's lives--but only if we approach that converge carefully.