I was horrified recently by an article I read in the current edition of the Blue Ridge Business Journal. The article is not online that I could find.
Entitled "GPS will help you track lost socks, cheating spouses," the article/column advocates this new technology in all things. This is so someone will know where you are and what you're doing 24/7.
Never mind that some of us would like to take a mental health day from work and spend it beneath a tree reading a book without worrying if the spy satellite is going to inform the boss.
Most scary was this:
"Politicians are suggesting that high school students be chipped to prevent truancy."
I think skipping school a few times was one of the better things I did growing up, and I was a straight-A student.
The idea of being watched all the time seems to be OK with a great number of people, but I am not one of them. I like my privacy. I liked skipping school once in a while. I like taking the car for a drive and having no one know exactly where I am. Sometimes I like to not know where I am.
Why must we all be locatable at any given time? Will there one day be a moratorium on the number of times you can go to the bathroom in the future, and if you exceed that you'll be penalized?
How far will this go?
Not to mention nobody has any clue if this electronic embedding in people's skin will cause problems. Our bodies emit electric frequencies; that is why acupuncture and biofeedback and many health technologies, like sonograms, work. They take advantage of the electrical energy in the body.
These chips certainly could throw that off and make people sick. There is concern that cellphones cause brain cancer; what about this?
It's one thing to voluntarily put on a GPS device while you're out hiking so that if you get lost you can be found; it's another to advocate tracking so school kids won't skip school.
We are slowly eroding away our individuality. Things like this surely will turn us all into little robots, thinking and feeling and doing the exact same thing. Creativity will be weeded out like it's some kind of dandelion in the rose garden.
Nobody will skip school. Or take a mental health day. Or drive without knowing where they're bound.
What a dull world it will be.
Pretty scary if you ask me. A form of this tracking is already being set up around the nation. Here is So.Fla its been rumored we're getting city cams for public areas. Soon there will be no place where we won't be watched and monitored. Scary, very scary that we are allowing our privacy and individuality to be chipped away. Thanks so much Ashcroft.
ReplyDeleteGood grief. So much for land of the free. I would say the technology has wonderful uses . . . like your hiking example, or if someone requested to have one put in their car because they live in a high crime area, or whatever.
ReplyDeleteBut the day any government passes a law saying I need to chip and track my child will be the day I withdraw him from school.
it would certainly be frightening to be accountable at all times.
ReplyDeleteWould they remove the chips when you leave school? (not that it would make it ok.. just interested)
Naturally I wouldn't want a device implanted in my child, however I can think of a good use. Implant every soldier either bodily, if it's not harmful, or elsewhere. We would know quickly where the missing were.
ReplyDeleteI find all this stuff frightening. But I think it's already happening to a degree with the advent of cell phones and laptops. We are always plugged in and hardly ever alone in nature anymore. Our privacy like global warming is eroding so gradually that we don't notice and get used to it.
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