Sociometric badges: Augmented Human Beings or Big Brother Society?

According to The Sunday Times, companies are fitting thousands of their staff with body-worn tracker devices that check how much sleep they have, how well they work with colleagues and even monitor their body language, tone-of-voice or emotions.

Supporters of the revolution in “workplace wearables” say it’s creating a more productive “augmented human being”, but privacy campaigners say it’s leading to a “Big Brother” society.

Chris Brauer, director of innovation at Goldsmiths, University of London, said the next development would be “biometric CVs”, with job applicants required to present evidence from monitoring to show they are biometrically qualified.

I’m sure, it won’t be long before Google (sorry, Alphabet) et al are building this into their recruitment processes.

I believe “sociometric badges” are just another way to get closer to customers to influence their purchasing habits. How long will it take the big tech brands to leverage this ‘new’ technology as the perfect complement to their real-time customer insight – to further engage customers and ring up more targeted sales?

What am I saying. It’s probably already happening. They just don’t want us to know it yet.