ZD Net has an interesting article about a company that claims to have software capable of replicating human emotion; Emotional Machines -- Do We Want Them?. The start-up, Mind Systems, aims to implant its technology into any object with a human-machine interface. Apparently there's going to be a library developed to allow game developers to integrate the technology into their games.

The question is this; is the world ready for having emotional kitchen items, or snobbing agents in a computer game when they always get shot? Without being paranoid, aren't there any unforeseen consequences of the solution? What do you think?

yep. well, first of all, it's important to consider how "real" the emotions are. Furby's are emotional. If however the complexity of the emulated emotions makes them "real" enough, we might one day have to acknowledge them and treat them with the same respect as humans. not just pull their plug if they get annoying. and although utensils with feelings would be cool in a disney kind of way, it is rather unlike that people will be stuffing these emotions into things that we don't want to be emotional. It'll probably be fun.