Last week Daedalus unveiled his ‘Lying Eye’ video-analysis computer system, for telling if a speaker is lying. It decodes the body language of many small facial, bodily and verbal clues to spot the subtle signature of dishonesty, and gauges its magnitude. It will transform video conferences and law courts — and much else besides. For deceit and concealment are universal social skills. The human subconscious itself may have evolved as a safe place in which to hide the truth, freeing the conscious mind to deploy its own lies, and detect the lies of others. A machine that spots deception will transform society. Hysteria, that fashionable Victorian syndrome, vanished in this century through being ‘rumbled’. Daedalus hopes that Lying Eye will similarly expose many current emotional fashions.

Its first target will be the indignation industry. Claims to be shocked or offended, accusations of insensitivity, harassment or abuse, gusts of conspicuous compassion towards socially approved underdogs, all will wither under the cool scrutiny of the Lying Eye video scanner. With any luck, a whole portfolio of self-righteous posturing and virtuous outrage will be thoroughly shown up. Even the keenest players will have to abandon the game.

But Lying Eye itself is only the prototype of a broader emotion-detector. It makes its deductions from a vast wealth of non-verbal data — a full spatial Fourier analysis of all face and body movements, correlated with audio output. Many other emotions must also be coded in these data: hostility, superiority, nervousness, anger, drunkenness or druggedness, sexual invitation or intent, criminality, and so on. An improved video analyser could detect them all. Daedalus is developing a wider and more detailed program, provisionally code-named ‘Insight’, for the job.

‘Insight’ will initially be aimed at psychiatry and counselling. Clients will be happy to have their basic problems and attitudes identified at once, and their progress under therapy accurately monitored. But Insight should also soon escape into wider society. It should expose trickery and game-playing of all kinds, and enforce far more authentic and healthy styles of social interaction. Ultimately, Insight will be fitted to every security camera. Social harmony will then reach its final peak. Big Brother will know the location, feelings and intentions of each of his loyal subjects all the time.