Hapticity

How goddamn incredible would it be to have music composed for you on the fly, reflecting your emotions?

Everyone’s ears have suffered the effects of repetitively-played canned music, be it in workplaces, hospital environments or during phone calls made to directory inquiries numbers. On this basis, the research team decided that it would be “very interesting to design and build an intelligent system able to generate music automatically, ensuring the correct degree of emotiveness (in order to manage the environment created) and originality (guaranteeing that the tunes composed are not repeated, and are original and endless).”

And on a related, melodious note, I recently discovered that people have been using auto-tuning software on everyday sounds and speech. Cool! Here’s an auto-tuned baby crying.

If babies could be made to always sound like this when they cry, would the birth rate go up? Would people be less motivated to help infants in trouble because the crying would be less irritating? Would the kid develop musical abilities unlike any in history?