Recently there is news that Microsoft has applied for a patentfor a futuristic system that will be able to track each and every aspect of a computer user’s life - Right from his heartbeat to a guilty smile. The system dubbed the ‘Monitoring System 500′ will not only work through desktop or laptop computers but even through mobile phones and PDA’s making employee tracking in office possible.
But do such systems really do the good which they are expected to do or will such systems be just another run-of-the-mill device that everybody will learn to fool? Everybody knows that computers work on simple fundamentals of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) and can never be trustworthy. This ‘Big Brother’ machine that Microsoft is talking about will use the person’s facial expressions, heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing, body temperature to get to know his physical conditions. It looks good on paper but if we talk about us we can have the same expression for multiple physical conditions. Taking a simple example we can see that a person can have an elevated heartbeat if he has just come to office when the elevator was not working, and he can have the same heartbeat if he is upset or angry with something.
Such hi-tech monitoring systems that Microsoft is talking about can be there in Sci-Fi movies but I don’t think they will be as successful in day-to-day life, not to mention the evasion of personal privacy that they will lead to. Just as the example above, these systems can easily be fooled for personal gain. Another concern is that different individuals take different things differently, what might be serious stuff for one person can altogether be something to laugh about all day for the other. In this case also what Microsoft’s dream system thinks can not altogether be true.
Such systems can obviously work if we all are honest to the system, but does Microsoft really think that employees in an office are that honest?
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Via: Times Online