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Wearables currently decipher physiological biometrics: heart rate, pulse, caloric intake. But in the coming years, we’ll see emotion-sensing wearable technology that clues us into specific human emotions.

When this data is shared across networks, we’ll enter the dawn of the “Emotional Internet.”

This is not a purely theoretical concept. Already, there are efforts to measure and quantify human emotion in a machine-readable way. Affectiva, an emotion-measurement technology firm, has collected more than a billion frames of spontaneous facial expressions, using the data to develop technology that can detect several types of emotions.

One of the initiatives of Microsoft Research’s Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment (VIBE) division, meanwhile, is to explore human-computer interaction. It has designed a prototype scarf that employs sensors to discern the wearer’s mood and, via Bluetooth, the moods of others.

Another company, Spire, manufactures a small stone-shaped sensor that can be clipped to a bra strap or belt and is able to pick up on your stress levels.

Much of this research and development is part of the emerging field of affective computing, which examines ways to create sensors and computers that can detect and respond to human emotions.