>Those concerned about their privacy might be alarmed by the arrival of such badges. But Humanyze says it doesn’t record the content of what people say, just how they say it. And the boss doesn’t get to look at individuals’ personal data. It is also up to the employee to decide whether they want to participate.
Employees can choose whether they would like to participate, but it will be in every ID badge in 3-4 years?
I'm not really well informed about the science of speech analysis, but I'm going to assume raw audio is recorded at some stage, and since the device is the size of a credit card, I'll also assume it's not being processed on the device.
I don't see how this could possibly be as anonymized as they claim. You're also painting a target for rival enterprises or states who would like to carry out espionage against you, which seems like a legitimate concern in the financial industry.
Oh why even bother. Just do it in the bathroom as well. I like how it tracks everything and then throws that little -- but look, we are concerned for your privacy, we are not creepy at all.
> If you don’t give people choice, if you don’t aggregate instead of showing individual data,
Yes, let's aggregate data in some obscure way, while hand waving about "anonymizing" stuff. People will totally buy that, and trust us.
> Their bodies swiftly respond to stressful situations and relax when calm returns, leaving them primed for the next challenge,”
Lovely.
-"Steve, I think that patch froze the kernel".
-"Sorry, I am doing my daily hyperventilating and then calming down thing, to get my stats up for upcoming reviews. Ask the intern to restart everything. I'll be there in 30 min".
The voice analyzation stuff is really, really weird though.
In entire fairness, I get the impression that was part of a protocol used to develop data to inform the design of this device rather than something the device itself does, but I think it's nonetheless quite a telling example of the degree of invasiveness which the people behind it appear willing to contemplate.
I think a solution that can't be defeated by removing a lanyard would be better.
Asshole is s pretty strong word. There's a somewhat different explanation; it posits that engineers are ignorant rather than evil. Cory Doctorow said it better than I ever could:
Engineers are all basically high-functioning
autistics who have no idea how normal people
do stuff.
I got a lot of flack last time I posted that quip; I'll grant that it isn't strictly accurate in a medical sense. But it gets the point across. Engineers simply don't think the same way that muggles think, and in addition they're unable or unwilling to view the world from that different perspective.Thinking in a less than common way isn't an excuse or reason for doing something evil. To suggest it shows a lack of understanding of engineers, people with autism, and how things are designed and used.
Engineers are able to think that way, but it gets blindsided because the potential of the ideas in front of them are far too powerful and luminescent for anything else to be visible.
We aren't as dumb as people think we are.
And the capacity for deliberate evil exists, is out there, and is used. Sometimes the engineer is just a tool.
Quitting the second someone asks me to wear one. End of story.
If so, why not just make it a consumer-targeted product? Something only the badge holder can view data for?
And 'puff piece' doesn't seem to me to suffice, either. This isn't TechCrunch or PR Newswire; this is the Washington Post. And the article's pretty laudatory, too, with privacy concerns dismissed out of hand - politely, to be sure, but dismissed out of hand nonetheless. Granted, it's still something of a stretch to say 'this is the way the world is going'. But it's a lot less so than it might be, and that's creepy in itself.
As measured by time spent at the desk?
Instead they focused on the corporate overlord to make it mainstream.
Are they aiming for as many enemies as possible?