It started with pagers. Beep beep beep. It's your boss calling.
Now we have cellular, phones, satellite phones, e-mail, PDA's, notebooks, and access to the corporate network via VPN.
And iPhones.
We are now "empowered" to accomplish work where ever we are, and at any time of the day or night. We're "road warriors" and "telecommuters".
"But sir, it's Saturday!" doesn't cut you any slack any more.
Apparently, neither does, "But sir, the family and I are on our approved vacation. We're on the 'It's a Small World' ride right now.. can't you hear the singing?"
(Your GPS-enabled phone will back up your claim; you really are at Disneyland.)
In a 2005 study, the Families and Work Institute found that one in every three people had performed job duties outside of regularly scheduled work hours. My guess is that if you did that survey today, you get 66% answering yes (IT types would be at 100%--IMHO).
Yes.
And we got spy cameras watching us now, too-- with more and more cities proudly boasting of "100% camera-coverage". The Chinese are becoming remarkably adept at designing streetlights, mailboxes, fencepost's, clocks, etc. that really are nothing more than camera concealer's, and they're exporting them as fast as they can make them.
We're onboard Arthur C. Clark's Discovery, and HAL is watching us. I ain't joking with you. Some of those "security" cameras have HAL's facial recognition ability, and some of them read lips (if not now, soon).
Like the man said, if you're not doing anything wrong, this shouldn't bother you.
GPS tracking. Security cameras. Can't escape from work... Hmmm...
Open the pod bay doors, HAL... I wanna get off.
Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment