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Again w/ Neal Stephenson bring prescient (in this case his 1992 "Snow Crash"): Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The es
by EvanAnderson 6y ago
Again w/ Neal Stephenson bring prescient (in this case his 1992 "Snow Crash"):
Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo...
Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.
- boogies 6y ago> hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section How long does simple key logging last before they add eye tracking?
- EvanAnderson 6y agoSeems very feasible: https://webgazer.cs.brown.edu/ https://webgazer.cs.brown.edu/
- boogies 6y ago…or Apple Watch-like pulse tracking, etc., and then who knows if/when Neuralink becomes practically, widely deployable and useful. I think we’re just a bit beyond the technical capabilities of the Thought Police right now in terms of sensing — their telescreens could hear breathing in quiet rooms, but on the other hand Orwell didn’t seem to foresee people buying their own pocketable ones with GPS & cell triangulation, etc. (they didn’t necessarily know everyone’s exact location all the time) — but perhaps we’re quickly surpassing their analytics abilities (particularly bandwidth — finite human staff are less of a bottleneck) with AI.
- na85 6y agoNot long. Software as an industry feels particularly devoid of ethics these days. If Bloggins doesn't build this for his employer the guy in the next co-working space will.
- pjlegato 6y agoThere is no coherent "software industry" as a unitary entity with shared norms and standards. There never was. Since all you really need to get started is a laptop, there are rather millions of more or less atomized software shops and developers attached to other industries, other streams of revenue and capital, other entirely disconnected cultures and social norms.
- drdaeman 6y agoIf this happens, two^W three can play this game. If this ever becomes a thing, I'm definitely going to open a business, selling 3D printed heads with animated eyes. Elevator pitch for VCs would be about machine learning - neural networks generating consumer head nodding behaviors that match the read phrases, as well as rising simulated body temperature in righteous awe or anger upon "reading" certain pieces of spam. And how all that behavioral data is somehow valuable (lol).
- EvanAnderson 6y agoYou'll need that fake head to be vascularized too. Photoplethysmography is a thing. >smile<
- danudey 6y agoOkay so now I'm just meant to hire someone who looks like me to read my e-mails for me? Definitely going to have to try to expense that.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoYou can outsource it. Better yet, set up a startup to offshore it. Or - ding ding! - AI it, providing Virtual Work as a Service. You can have virtual cubicles full of imaginary AI-generated people automating bureaucratic busywork being generated by AI management algorithms. Maybe I should write a novel about this. (Or am I too late?)
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago> selling 3D printed heads with animated eyes I figure it's an arms race that will play out in the software space. More generally, it's deep-fakes vs deep-fake-detectors.
- n0nc3 6y agoGiven that its already deployed in academic contexts, I suspect that the more invasive employers are already using it. Finance, defense, etc.
- koonsolo 6y agoThat would be illegal in EU
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- temp667 6y agoAre you sure. The EU mandates much MORE monitoring in most cases. Self driving cars may need to have camera's on occupants to monitor them during driving etc. A lot of the safety stuff in EU is MUCH more nanny state and CCTV is much more widespread it seems. Also very power data collection and centralized databases about everyone in the EU (ie, I don't think "states" or localities issue local ID's).
- Teknoman117 6y agoI think the point was that while the various governments in the EU deploy surveillance systems en masse, private companies can not.
- koonsolo 6y agoSpying on employees is very restricted. Anything that would even come close to it would be strongly rejected by the unions.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago"May" And no - CCTV is not widespread at all. There's far more CCTV in the UK than there is in the EU where I live now. States do indeed issue local IDs. There is no common EU ID card and no common EU passport. There isn't even a common immigration database for Schengen - although that's planned for 2023. (It was supposed to be 2022, but it's been delayed by a year.)
- user5994461 6y agoEye tracking is already live in production. Had the joy to see some contractors at work. The webcam is recording 24/7 to ensure their face is in front of the screen. If the employee looks away for a second, the screen flashes something about no user being present. If somebody else shows up in the field of view, for example me walking by, the screen flashes something about an unauthorized user. The session is locked out after a few notifications.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoWow I would hate to work there. Unless this is some kind of top-secret government consultancy thing that is totally unappropriate.
- user5994461 6y agoThe work involves reading and reviewing some documents. Some confidential documents but nothing fancy. It's minimum wage, hourly contracting with no benefits.
- zentiggr 6y agoSo in other words, easily swapped out for something far more humane. Sounds like the best path.
- toyg 6y agoPlease tell us where this is happening, so that we can avoid ever working there. Pretty sure this would be illegal in most European countries.
- user5994461 6y agoThe software is made by a US software company. You have to onboard user accounts to them, install the authentication software on a laptop, and it will open a remote desktop to an AWS workspace. The session is constantly tracking the user's face and gets terminated if they look away for a minute. Contractors are disconnected regularly because their face stopped being recognized, or they can't login in the first place after 5 tries. Recall one contractor that contacted support because they couldn't login, support told him that their face was too dark.
- bjarneh 6y agoSpooky reading. Almost strange how many times this sad prophecy about surveillance has been told without us reacting properly. Even now; when we are approaching some of the most pessimistic scenarios foretold, we don't seem to react.
- Nasrudith 6y agoIt isn't a prophecy it is reading in what you want to see from it. Snow Crash was over the top camp when it was first written.
- coldtea 6y agoWell, I haven't read Snow Crash, but this excerpt is neither "over the top" nor camp, and appears quite prophetic given 2020.
- freeone3000 6y agoThe main character of Snow Crash is named Hiro Protagonist. The above is meant to be absurdity, like the full body scanner in Airplane 2.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoYou mean like the ones we have now?
- freeone3000 6y agoIt was an absurdity at the time.
- rriepe 6y agoWell, I haven't seen Airplane!, but this example is neither "over the top" nor camp, and appears quite prophetic given 2020.
- harryf 6y agoThe GSuite apps (when you’re paying) tell you who looked a spreadsheet, doc etc and when they did it. Missing is how long
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoSteps please. Asking for a friend.
- crazygringo 6y agoBut that's not a feature primarily for management, it's a feature for the document creator. When you send around slides or a doc, there are times when it's actually pretty useful to see who took a look or not -- so if it's important you can ping them. It's not perfect, but it helps. Privacy-wise it's not a whole lot different from being able to see who's currently viewing the document, which has existed forever.
- indymike 6y agoThere's a big difference in how they are being presented and to who the numbers are presented to.
- philsnow 6y agoAlso comically missing is what document version they looked at. At best, it might say you saw version "Friday".
- purplecats 6y agoyou can opt our at the employee level, at least at my company which ive done
- paxys 6y agoThis isn't even close to satire anymore. I know managers who track which of their employees have read Google Docs they send out, and how long they take to first open it.
- SkyPuncher 6y agoI do that occasionally, but it's never to single out an employee. If I'm sending things out that my reports can't or don't want to read, I'm wasting everyone's time.
- why-el 6y agoYou can just ask them if they read it in your one-on-ones or in a direct email/Slack/whatever? Instead of tracking their habits?
- anoncow 6y agoIt seems managers don't want to talk to their reports.
- peterwoerner 6y agoAsking which of the fifteen memos they read this past quarter might not be a great use of time when you only have ~30 minutes for the one on one.
- triceratops 6y agoPeople aren't always honest.
- seppin 6y ago> If I'm sending things out that my reports can't or don't want to read, If you have to ask..
- banana_giraffe 6y agoIn the same vein, I'm part of a reporting chain that uses "Officevibe". Mini little surveys to measure our happiness. Now managers have goals for various metrics. Of course, that has turned the entire thing into the most annoying game you can imagine. Add in the "beatings will continue until morale improves" meetings on the reports, and I'm now convinced one of the best questions I can ask of a new employer is "how do you track employee morale?".
- Spooky23 6y agoIt wasn’t that prescient. GroupWise allowed that in the 90s. I knew a few psycho manager types who were angry when I moved them to Exchange because they would track who opened their messages and yell at them if it wasn’t fast enough. :)
- EvanAnderson 6y agoMy wife worked in a GroupWise shop in the early 2000's and apparently there was tracking-related political intrigue and drama. >sigh<
- sp332 6y agoSnow Crash was satire of a genre of sci-fi story, so while it may have popularized some ideas I don't think it was trying to be prescient. Entertaining though :)
- imperialdrive 6y agoI just started Diamond Age... Good times.
- No1 6y agoI was thinking of this passage when I took some mandatory online corporate “security training” a few weeks ago. They required scrolling through all of the text on each page and looking at it for a minimum amount of time (a few minutes) before you could click through to the next page.
- ideamotor 6y agoBuahahahaha. I need to read that book again.