When you get a computer-generated voice on the other end of the phone, you can always tell you're talking to a machine, right? That voice has all the same intonations as an intelligent receptionist, but somehow there's no "feeling" behind it.
Dr. Manfred Clynes has spent a substantial part of his career probing exactly -- right down to the microsecond -- how that "feeling" is conveyed. Much of his research has focused on music: those qualities that express a composer's presence or allow a virtuoso musician to give a heart-rending performance when a lesser artist is merely showing his technical proficiency.
According to Clynes, those emphemeral qualities can be graphed and measured. This biological, non-verbal language -- called SENTICS -- is genetically programmed into our central nervous systems. Clynes' recent research involves programming these sentic forms into computers, blurring the lines between non-living and sentient communication, machine and man.
Clynes brings a wide range of talents to his task. He is a concert pianist, neurophysiologist, electronics engineer, computer expert, poet and philosopher. He received a doctorate of science from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a master's degree in music from the Juilliard School of Music in New York. The author of hundreds of articles, papers and monographs, he published SENTICS, a book on the nature of emotions, in 1977.
