Microsoft to develop software to ’spy’ on workers
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
An interesting development sees Microsoft seeking a patent to develop a software that would allow managers to monitor or ‘spy’ on workers. I guess this comes on the back of a string of research that indicate there is a general lack of productivity in the workplace. It is believed tens of thousands of work hours a week are lost with employees using the net to do things other than what they should be doing, which is work. With the recent rise in popularity of social networking sites, I guess the problems have gotten worse. Online games and reading emails are two other popular distractions.
The idea of the system is to detect performance in workers through various measurements such as blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, brain signals, among a few other things. Supposedly, the system can be used by managers to monitor performance of workers to improve productivity levels by offering assistance to those who are not performing well or even sacking those who consistently under perform.
Checking a worker’s capability through measuring metabolism? In that case, half the working population would be sacked because, lets face it, a great number of workers sitting behind their cubicles are not the fittest individuals. A product like this might make for good fun, but I am not sure if it would be a serious tool to monitor how effective a worker is.
Unless a tool with enough artificial intelligence that recognises that people do vastly different types of work and measures their effectiveness accordingly, this system to me seems would generalise all types of work and therefore it would be impossible to monitor productiveness thoroughly as there would be a tendency to generalise everybody’s work.
As usual, while there are advocates, there are other groups that were quick to let their grievances be known about Microsoft’s office spy software patent, with some groups claiming it will be a further erosion into our civil liberties. I can see where they are coming from to some extent. Allowing companies to take all sorts of data and statistics about a person may not be conducive in the current atmosphere where high profile data leaks from stolen disks and laptops have made people uneasy.
