Companies love using the late and greatest engineering to keep track of employees , even when they’reat home . But Amazon ’s new idea goes to extremes to treat employee like fleshy robots . The Seattle - based troupe was just allot two patents for employee wristbands that expect like something from dystopian science fiction .
The two new patent of invention , first spotted byGeekwire , are for wristbands that path where a given warehouse workers ’ hand are at all times . You register that correctly . I have seen the future , and it ’s just rows and rows of low - paid workers in endless warehouses being told to stop pick their noses . Or to get back from their bathroom break , as it were .
In theory , the wristbands are design to cut across where an employee ’s hands are in coitus to inventory bins and even supply haptic feedback when a worker is put something in the incorrect bin . Which is to say that the wristband could nudge you like a Nintendo 64rumble pakwhenever you were doing something wrong . ( Or , I guess , it could hypothetically “ zap ” you if our imagination were to go full dystopian and add some tasers . )
The letters patent were originally file in 2016 and were grant just this Tuesday , and it should be observe that Amazon has made no proclamation about really manufacturing the devices . They ’re simply patent designs . For now .
As you could see for yourself in the letters patent filings , the system comprise of three parts , including an “ ultrasonic social unit ” for the hand ( that ’s the wristband ) , supersonic transducers placed around the work environs , and a “ management mental faculty ” to track the bodily process of the worker . The patent filing hints at the fact that this is all more or less a holdover system of rules until robots can become nimble enough to automate the intact process completely .
So would a system like this be legal ? utterly , under current US practice of law . And Amazon has a chronicle of win when the company ’s workers endeavor to fight back .
Amazon rather famously won a 2014US Supreme Court casebrought by storage warehouse workers who were being searched for stolen trade good every shift . It was n’t so much that the doer object about being searched , but rather that they were spending as long as 25 minutes waiting in security lines without earnings . The court rule that they had no right field to get yield for their time while waiting to get out work . And given the current materialistic makeup of the Supreme Court , do n’t bet on any pro - worker opinion about surveillance devices anytime soon either .
We ca n’t say that we were n’t warn about the employer surveillance complex . We ’ve seen it pop up repeatedly in foretelling from the early 2000s , including this futuristic concept video fromAccenture in 2003 . Everything in that prevision , from the name badges to the location monitoring is a realism here in 2018 .
It ’s becoming more and more common for companies to monitor their employees through invasive technology , as there are nigh no law of nature to discontinue it . And with Amazon growing and cities retain togrovel at its feet , it only makes sense that theEverything Storewould lead the mode .
Again , Amazon has n’t announced that they ’re going to make every employee wear a wristband , but many storage warehouse worker already have devices that monitor their move . If these patent are any reading , the hereafter look even non-white for the American worker .
[ GeekwireandGoogle PatentsandUS Patent and Trademark Office ]
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