The powerful genie of technology, whether used for convenience or human transformation is out of the bottle.
The questions are: Where do we draw the line? Is The 6th Day among us? When it comes to the paranoia induced by technology, as opposed to its many pleasures, perhaps nothing triggers as much trepidation as the notion of implantable biochips. If anything sparks a legitimate argument that the dark visions of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley have finally come to pass, there might not be a better example than an anonymous civil servant in the Department of Homeland Security monitoring your every move, if not your every thought. But imagine this: you have been in a terrible head-on collision on the highway. You and the driver of the other car have suffered exactly the same trauma. Both of you linger at death’s door as you await paramedics. But a new breed of implantable chip could mean that you survive, while your chipless counterpart dies. Would you want it?
This is not a theoretical question. Anthony Guiseppi-Elie, a professor of bioengineering at Clemson University, is currently developing such a chip for battlefield application by the U.S. Department of Defense. The same physiological information that would be used to save wounded warriors in the “golden hour”—the first critical 60 minutes during which the line between life and death is often drawn in traumatic injuries—can just as well save you in the future. Moreover, for those who tend toward conspiracy theories and fear biochips because they are an invasion of your privacy, Guiseppi-Elie has a simple, clear message: “If your concern goes to the notion of being monitored, in terms of your physical location on the planet, that argument is hollow because the government already knows where you are,” he says. “The government already knows where I am and what I’m doing right now because I’m on my cell phone talking to you.” Today’s technology, he points out, can track any cell phone user to his or her precise location.
On yet another frontier, far from the complex ethical issues involved in the most revolutionary new medical technologies, the question of intent is perhaps much more important. George Orwell envisioned a world where ubiquitous surveillance, enabled by technology would negate the very notions of privacy and freedom. Sixty years after the book’s publication; however, the iconic image of Big Brother has fueled countless pop culture nightmares of totalitarianism has been supplanted by another force: the big business interests that want your primary functions to be productive work and conspicuous consumption.
Eighteen months ago, Microsoft applied for a patent for a new workplace monitoring system that critics say crosses a threshold of no return when it comes to the management of employees. Using a computer system that links workers to wireless sensors with the intention of measuring their heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, body movements, facial expressions, and blood pressure, the new system is intended to measure an employee’s physical well-being, productivity, and competence. According to the patent application, it could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly.”
Even more disturbing to some observers, but a miracle solution to marketers, is the science of group or collaborative filtering, known as GF. If you’ve ever had Amazon.com recommend a book or CD you might like with astonishing accuracy, based on your previous purchases, you’ve experienced GF, a digital software created with a hidden purpose: to read your mind and sell you things. It empowers companies to manipulate our tastes and behavior with such precision that they can directly influence our behavior. But is it truly manipulation or advancements toward the art of marketing?
The horrors that Orwell imagined were grounded in the fear that technology could invade our behavior to the point where we have no privacy or freewill left. For most people, the suggestion that marketers of the foreseeable future will be able to break our will to the extent that we become machines of mass consumption is ridiculous. Yet objective watchdogs explain that consumer behavior is becoming less of a choice and more of an engineered new form of reality from which is there is no escape.
Scott Jordan, Founder and CEO of SCOTTEVEST, is a technologist who brought one of the most obvious and coolly advantageous new technologies to the market several years ago with the patented creation of Technology Enabled Clothing. TEC system provides the ultimate “gear management solution” for today’s mobile lifestyle. Yet at the same time, Johnson often senses that in a way, technology has enslaved him. “The thing I find troubling and many people find troubling,” he says, “is the addiction that I and others have to this notion of constant communication, constant touch. I’ve gone through a period where I slept with my Blackberry in the bed. If I get up at two in the morning to go to the bathroom, for some reason I find it necessary to see whether anyone has e-mailed me. There are a lot of people like me in this regard.”
As a result, he thinks government should be more vigilant in an assessment of how technology is affecting humanity, even with the most casual applications. “Once we had cars, people said we needed speed limits, we needed safety belts,” he says. “Why wouldn’t the same sort of safety features be discussed by governments, as well as these new issues of technology, to ensure that these things are being used properly? What I find most interesting is that the things that scare me about technology are the same things that excite me. So, how do you make the distinction?”
Vincent Lyons, President of the Machinery & Technology Group at bedding manufacturer Leggett & Platt, says he has a clear, simple answer to that question. “I would draw the line where we are no longer in control of the technology,” Lyons says. While he would not allow a biochip to be implanted in his body, download the memory of a dying wife into a robot or live to be 150 years old, he can claim the unique distinction of being on a technological frontier of considerable interest to most human beings: sleep. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Leggett & Platt introduced the Starry Night Sleep Technology Bed, selling for between $20,000 and $50,000. Integrating diagnostic and entertainment technologies, the bed is the first to offer anti-snoring technology, dual programmable temperature controls for its two sides, Internet connectivity, and an iPod docking station. Lyons says Starry Night is an example of how technology can—and should—be pushed to its limits for the common good. “There is nothing,” he says, “more important to the quality of life than the quality of your sleep.”
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