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Child-tracking wristbands edge us closer to a dystopian future

• TehCorwiz 13y ago
  The thing that pisses me off about prognostication like this is the assumption that this will become the norm. Between thoughtful parents and school systems who choose not to participate through to the realities of poverty and the wealth gap something like this will never occur. For the small segment of the population which does use it -- those among the wealthiest of the middle-class -- it will be a short-lived fad which lasts the three or so years that this current crop of students happens to be between the ages of 9 and 12. Then puberty starts to kick in and they refuse to wear it. Not to mention the social stigma which will follow a child wearing such a tracker. Since GPS first landed in consumer hands this future has been pitched at us. Each time it's gone quietly into the night. First it was a shoe (since trackers were larger then), then a wrist-band, then a custom phone, then any phone, now it's back to the wrist-band. It's a bad idea which gets progressively worse each time it comes up and less scary because all you have to do to make it go away is to make it un-cool.