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Microsoft seeks patent for software that measures the entire metabolism of wage slaves.

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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:09 PM
Original message
Microsoft seeks patent for software that measures the entire metabolism of wage slaves.
Edited on Thu Jan-17-08 06:09 PM by mhatrw
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3193480.ece

Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.

The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.

Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces. 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.
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aquart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:11 PM
Response to Original message
1. "Frustration or stress"???? LOL!
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KansDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:12 PM
Response to Original message
2. Man, I hope it doesn't have a DU sensor!
...or I'm SOL and out of a job!!!
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wtmusic Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:16 PM
Response to Original message
3. "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 to be unceremoniously fired help."
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Kutjara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:18 PM
Response to Original message
4. "provide assistance accordingly."
Edited on Thu Jan-17-08 06:19 PM by Kutjara
Sure, assistance right out the fucking door and into the unemployment line. So we'll soon not only have to do our crappy jobs and pretend to like it, but we'll have to force ourselves to really like it. Wasn't that the essence of Room 101 in Orwell's 1984? That you don't just pay lip service to the betrayal of your values, you actually believe it. You really want the rat to eat your lover's face. Then Big Brother owns you.

Why am I not surprised it's Microsoft that's developing this crap?
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lpbk2713 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:18 PM
Response to Original message
5. They're creating a class of drones.




I expected it to happen some time during the corrupt BushCo Regime.
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ToeBot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:22 PM
Response to Original message
6. Sounds like a lie detector, now why would an employer want that? nt
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:22 PM
Response to Original message
7. More: DARPA Ushers in the End of Privacy
http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=12094

Government agencies on the lookout for terrorists and corporations bent on shaping the appetites of our consumer culture control the technology behind this modern-day version of the Eye of Sauron. Firewalls and other security measures on privately controlled servers currently limit the reach of this new form of surveillance, but with media systems like wireless networks and Internet service providers becoming increasingly integrated, few corners of the average American’s daily life will be hidden from the gaze of this steadily expanding electronic awareness.

Even now, as media conglomerates and information technology engineers begin charting this process of integration, “You have to assume there’s not a whole lot that’s private,” says Adam Clayton Powell III, vice provost for globalization at the University of Southern California and the former director of USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center, which produced much of the know-how for these “truly aware” technologies. “We’ve developed software that can read a subject’s facial expression and body position to understand his psychological state,” Powell says. “We also discovered that the intervals between a user’s keystrokes at a computer interface can reveal anger or boredom and lots of other emotions.” ...

“This does sound like science fiction,” Powell says, likening the potential of some of the “truly aware” technologies developed at USC to the devices that allowed the fictional Krell – the vanished master race in the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet – to interact telepathically with their machines.

Considering that many projects have received funding from a division of the same Department of Defense now at the center of the Internet surveillance controversy, which set the tone for the Bush administration’s war on terror, it’s worth noting that the Krell – whose machines dutifully carried out the violent, unconscious desires of their makers – were ultimately destroyed by their own creation.

much more ...
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DBoon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:26 PM
Response to Original message
8. Bummer!
Edited on Thu Jan-17-08 06:27 PM by DBoon
there goes my plan to rule the world by infiltrating the workplace with zombies

This device would detect an already-dead employee immediately
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 07:07 PM
Response to Reply #8
11. DBoon, can you guess what my "handle" stands for?
Hint: It's an acronym of a very relevant song title.
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DBoon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 08:23 PM
Response to Reply #11
13. I'm acronym-challenged right now
nt
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 02:15 AM
Response to Reply #13
18. Sorry.
and so my soul collapsed into the big guilt wad some big thunder law forces me to eat shit and if i was a word, could my letters number 100? more likely coarse and gutteral one syllable, anglo-saxon i'm a victim of fact let's say i loved a girl but the world was wrong and i was forced to march in line finally, i felt like handcuffs machines disregard my pronouns i am defeated i am the cool, damp clay
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DBoon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 05:17 PM
Response to Reply #18
21. Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs
nt
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KaptBunnyPants Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 06:33 PM
Response to Original message
9. This must be that freedom Capitalists always talk about.
Why don't they just chain people to their desks and whip them to increase productivity? At least there's dignity in that...
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Kutjara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 10:32 PM
Response to Reply #9
15. Because whips and chains cost money.
Edited on Thu Jan-17-08 10:36 PM by Kutjara
And then there's the cost of cleaning up the human waste produced by the chained-up staff. Not to mention feeding them. Even animal feed is expensive if you have to buy a lot of it. Much cheaper to just enslave employees' minds, but let them go to the bathroom themselves and buy their own food.

Of course, they could always charge employees rent on their whips and chains. That'd work too.
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mhatrw Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 07:06 PM
Response to Original message
10. Kick. n/t
Edited on Thu Jan-17-08 07:07 PM by mhatrw
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Radio_Lady Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 07:10 PM
Response to Original message
12. Another example of ageist discrimination: What about us retired folks?
How the hell will we know when we are dead? Huh?
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backscatter712 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 08:39 PM
Response to Original message
14. It's like going though a polygraph examination...
except it lasts your entire working day.

Spank you very much, Microsoft.
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IDemo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 10:45 PM
Response to Original message
16. Does this mean I can get a MCS-EKG/EEG certification?
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Rex Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-17-08 10:46 PM
Response to Original message
17. Wow, last year of Little Dictator's reign and all the corps are doing
their best to gain control over us.
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WritersBlock Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 05:38 AM
Response to Original message
19. The attitude in my office, from drones & management alike, would short it out in no time.


Facial expressions? Frustration or stress?

They're fucking joking, right?
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conspirator Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-18-08 06:20 AM
Response to Original message
20. This is like the matrix. We will all be plugged n/t
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