The Japanese have invented a system that monitors our conversations at work. If it catches on, a busybody will monitor who you speak to, for how long and how you ignore.

It's all in the cause of efficiency. Companies naturally want to eliminate cock ups where bond trader X will waste an afternoon schmoozing client Z, when compliance officer Y could have told him that Z is going to jail soon. But X and Y rarely talk to each other, after X laughed at Y's obsession with cats.

Isn't this sort of oppression slightly counter productive though?

Hitachi said yesterday it will develop a system that monitors the state of interpersonal communication among its workers.

Sensor-equipped name tags will detect when conversations take place between whom and for how long.

(So, we're all going to be tagged!)

When these sensors recognize one another's identification information, the system assumes a conversation has taken place. Once recognition is made the sensors begin automatically measuring the duration of conversations.

The measurement data are transmitted to a server, where they are analyzed and presented in graphical form. The quantity of conversations by persons and groups is plotted on a curve, with the most-active talkers at the apex and the most-isolated persons at the base.

So, presumably, chatterboxes are to be encouraged. What if most of your conversations take place at the drinks machine, or in the kitchen. How does the quality of conversation vary as it moves from the terminal, to the toilet? They don't say. This needs further investigation, we would suggest.

A quick glance at a graph can show which persons and groups are not communicating enough during the course of work, according to Hitachi.

In one test of the system using 37 workers, Hitachi's graphs gave an indication of the exact time, during a development project, when a problem arose. This was when managers had not been interacting very much.

Hitachi plans to commercialize the system as early as next fiscal year.