Sherry Chandler » Maybe it really is time for me to retire
Maybe it really is time for me to retire
I See Invisible People has picked up on Microsoft’s apparent scheme to turn your work desktop into an employer’s version of the HAL2000. From the Times of London:
Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.
The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.
Talk about invasion of privacy!
If I’m not to be allowed to fume quietly at my desk, it may be time for me to leave the work force.
Though, as commenter Dusty Royston remarked, I may have a little time:
By the time Microsoft gets the bugs out of this, all of those desk jobs will be done by computers anyway; so who cares?
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4 Comments
1. Tommy replies at 18th January 2008, 4:17 pm :
Does this remind anyone else of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Specifically, all the wonderful inventions that Arthur encounters, which can deduce his mental and physical state but don’t really seem to care? Keep up like this, and we’ll be throwing all the computers in the trash heap one of these days, after a prophetic vision of someone arguing with his coffee machine.
Share and Enjoy!
2. sherry replies at 18th January 2008, 4:42 pm :
I don’t know, Tommy. It seemed a little bit more sinister than the HHG. I thought more along the lines of Brazil. As Terry says:
I just don’t think this will ever fly in the U.S. I sure hope not. But who knows about elsewhere. For all the depredations of the Bush years, our civil liberties are still protected here.
3. Rebecca Clayton replies at 19th January 2008, 11:47 am :
Big Brother is late with this. We were expecting it in 1984.
4. Sam L. Martin replies at 19th January 2008, 8:09 pm :
Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Berry continue to stand as magnificent heroes. No computer, only a typewriter. And a horse-drawn plow.
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