Woo-hoo, little microscopic sensors will soon be everywhere, tracking us constantly, happily sending data back to motherships somewhere. This of course, will be done solely to help us all make informed decisions. So, no need to worry your silly little heads about, oh, businesses collaborating with governments and sending the data along to them or about what happens when these systems get hacked and exploited. Instead, let us behold our new surveillance society.
I recently wrote about Humanyze, a new startup that has created a smart employee badge to help track employee movements and social interactions throughout the day and correlate the data to company goals.
Humanyze, which doesn’t seem very human to me, monitors everything serfs employees say, including tone of voice, to insure they are being “loyal, plastic robots for a world that doesn’t care.” Whoops, how did that Frank Zappa lyric sneak into a discussion about the wonderfulness of your employer monitoring everything you do? my bad. “I’m sorry Bob, but you’ve been spending far too much time at the coffee maker and we’ve sent a message about this to your boss., and further, your tone of voice has been sarcastic and unhelpful lately.”
But wait, there’s more.
Oral B has a smart toothbrush. The toothbrush uses Bluetooth and a mobile app to capture data about your tooth brushing habits. It includes a timer to make sure you’re brushing for a full two minutes, and it maps your brushing so if you concentrate really hard on your bottom front and give short shrift to your upper molars, the app lets you know and gives you feedback.
Will it spend a nasty note to my dental insurance provider should I not properly brush my molars?
Cheaper sensors will fuel the age of smart everything, says TechCrunch, in a relentlessly perky article mentioning none of the downsides of such monitoring.
Who benefits from this? Hint, the consumer and the citizen are at the bottom of the list, after business and governments.