Having a Hard Time Being a Human? This App Manages Friendships for You

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we can track just about any superficial health metric imaginable: Our steps, our sleep, the number of beers we drink, the number of gym classes we miss because of those beers. Is it just me, or should we be sick of ourselves by now?

If this is the age of the quantified self, tomorrow very well could be the age of the quantified other. Why stop at evaluating yourself when you could measure, chart and optimize your relationships with the people around you, too? The thought is a little unnerving, but its not unrealistic. The new app pplkproffers a provocative glimpse of what this future might look like: It helps optimize your social life, automatically sending messages and using data to determine whos worth spending time with.

Developed by artists Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald, pplkpr lets you quantify the value of your relationships based on a few data streams. A heart rate wrist band measures the subtle changes in your heart rate, alerting you to spikes in stress or excitement. This biometric data is correlated with information you manually input about the people youre hanging out with. Based on patterns, algorithms will determine whether you should be spending more time with a certain person or if you should cut himout altogether.

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Having a Hard Time Being a Human? This App Manages Friendships for You