Chips With Everything
Thanks to long-time reader Percival for drawing our attention to this story. At last! Workers are being chipped! Just what the world needs!
The TUC is worried that staff could be coerced into being microchipped. Its general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “We know workers are already concerned that some employers are using tech to control and micromanage, whittling away their staff’s right to privacy.
“Microchipping would give bosses even more power and control over their workers. There are obvious risks involved, and employers must not brush them aside, or pressure staff into being chipped.”
Given the invasive forms of control already deployed in some workplaces, I can see a lot of people accepting this as inevitable.
It barely surprises us that some workers have already been chipped does it? Isn’t that weird?
“Hey, have you heard they’re putting chips in people now?”
“Yeah, that figures.”
I wonder how an employer could convince themselves that this is okay. You might be able to Bad Faith yourself into believing you’re a force for good in the world by employing people [on minimum wage], but it must be hard to keep the old self delusion going when you’re signing off on putting chips in people. Oh wait, I know how:
“It’s just the way things are going,” they’ll say, “All the new light switches and vending machines need us to have chips.”
That really is what they’ll say isn’t it? It won’t be any one person’s fault that we’re suddenly sitting around with our colleagues in the office canteen waiting to have a chip put in. It’ll feel like the day we all got ‘flu jabs, except now we’re having chips put in so that we can enjoy the privilege of opening doors without the incapacitating gas being released. It won’t be anyone’s fault. It’ll just be the new way.
Hey, you want to be able to switch the lights on don’t you?
About Robert Wringham
Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk