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Remote Control Workers



Since we’re talking about being technologically controlled from outside your body, here are two creepy examples of this idea in operation.

I’ve written about one of these elsewhere, the remote control system being developed in Japan to steer humans via a headset as though they were a children’s toy. Sounds creepy, but wait till you see it in action via this video. Check out how the girl just smiles and giggles as she’s moved about mindlessly by somebody else. What else could you do if you in that scenario but laugh, right?

Another great and creepy example of this idea done in a different way:

Avis Walton is used to being told where to go and what to do once he gets there. As a “picker” for 99 Cents Only Stores, Walton spends his 5 a.m.-to-3:30 p.m. shift cruising around a 750,000-square-foot distribution center in Katy, Texas, in an electric cart responding to a stream of spoken instructions. “Go to row 12, section 8, bin 31,” an authoritative woman’s voice in his ear commands, and Walton zips to row 12. Blip-blip. He scans the bin tag with a wireless handheld computer to confirm he’s arrived at the right place. “Pick two cases plus four items,” the voice continues. Beginning to break a sweat, 24-year-old Walton lifts two cases of vinyl tablecloths onto a pallet, rips open a third box and removes four more tablecloths. “Confirm pick,” he says into his microphone, thus prompting the voice to send him zipping off on another assignment. Doesn’t her bossiness get annoying? “Nah, she’s cool,” Walton says. “She tells me what to do and I tell her when I do it.”

Perhaps if this voice were that of a human, Walton might take offense. But the “she” that he and his 15 fellow pickers interact with throughout their shifts is actually the computer-generated voice of the distribution center’s warehouse-management software. Like a digital flight controller, the as-yet-unnamed voice sends squads of pickers scurrying to gather the items needed by individual stores, all the while quietly calculating the most efficient routes that will also prevent them crashing into one another.

Found via Marshall Brain’s website. Brain also has a book where he describes a similar AI system which he terms “Manna” which would ultimately do much the same thing in employment settings - it would tell all employees exactly what to do and how to do it. If you coupled this with the remote control system above, you could effectively switch on your employees when they get to work and have them obey your every whim down to the letter. It’s a manager’s dream come true and would overcome all the problems of surly workers who are unmotivated, lazy and careless.

I just can’t wait for the future!

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12 Reader Responses

  1. Tim Boucher Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 2:06 pm

    Also this is an exciting couple of quotes from the MSNBC article author who got to be a guinea pig for the Japanese remote control headset:

    Another program had the electric current timed to music. My head was pulsating against my will, getting jerked around on my neck. I became so dizzy I could barely stand. I had to turn it off.

    NTT researchers suggested this may be a reflection of my lack of musical abilities. People in tune with freely expressing themselves love the sensation, they said.

    “We call this a virtual dance experience although some people have mentioned it’s more like a virtual drug experience,” said Taro Maeda, senior research scientist at NTT. “I’m really hopeful Apple Computer will be interested in this technology to offer it in their iPod.”

    […] They maintain that the point is not to control people against their will.

    If you’re determined to fight the suggestive orders from the electric currents by clinging to a fence or just lying on your back, you simply won’t move.

    But from my experience, if the currents persist, you’d probably be persuaded to follow their orders. And I didn’t like that sensation. At all.

    That’s great! So your options will be either to obey the commands or become completely paralyzed. Goddamn this stuff makes me want to throw up!

  2. Ant Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 2:40 pm

    Okay, I don’t like this anymore…

  3. Zeno Izen Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 2:58 pm

    “[…] They maintain that the point is not to control people against their will.”

    No, that’s just a bonus!

    I have more to say, but I haven’t had my coffee.

  4. Tim Boucher Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 3:36 pm

    It’s also interesting because the articles in MSNBC are usually completely toothless and don’t express much of an opinion at all.

  5. Ant Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 4:08 pm

    It’s possession!!!

  6. Tim Boucher Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 4:32 pm

    Yeah, in an old article on something similar, I wrote about what would happen when these technologies get into widespread use:

    http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005...mind-control-technology-becomes-real/

    a resurgence in extreme asceticism and advanced yogic control of the nervous system is likely to occur as a result of such technology entering into widespread use. These systems were originally (partly) designed to transcend limitations of the impure “animal” body, and it’s resulting instincts and desires. I wonder if we will see a new generation of monkish saints who seclude themselves from society to meditate alone in the desert to overcome the “demons” intruding in them from the modern age.

  7. Rev max Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 7:03 pm

    The idea that one is being remote controlled by radio or electrical waves of some sort is also an extremely common fantasy (?) among people with certain mental illnesses.

    Schizophrenia

    No two people suffer from schizophrenia in the exact same way. But to receive the DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia, that person must manifest serious, long-lasting decline in the ability to care for himself or herself, work, and connect socially with other people, they also must manifest at least two out of the following five categories of symptoms: grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, and negative symptoms. … The most common types of delusions in schizophrenia are delusions of persecution, which can be beliefs that others are plotting against you; delusions of grandeur, which are beliefs in one’s own extraordinary importance, for example, that one is the Presidnet of the United States; and delusions of being controlled, such as believing one’s movements or thoughts can and are being controlled by radio waves or by invisible wires in puppet like fashion.

  8. alistair Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 7:23 pm

    damned free will……………..imagine if we could consume a fluid substance that would turn it off even for just a short while……….aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

  9. Tim Boucher Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 7:47 pm

    Or imagine if we were prescribed drugs societally to make the remote-controlling robots not seem so bad and to diminish our ability to concentrate on anything else beside the sound of hypnotic android voices.

  10. alistair Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 9:44 pm

    yeah, that description of the guy working at wal mart with the voice in his ear/head………just creeps me out.

  11. alistair Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 9:46 pm

    and the voice on the automatic checkout at the supermarket must drive the few girls who still have jobs crazy…….until they go into a trance.

  12. alistair Says:
    March 18th, 2006 at 4:52 pm

    an unrelated item, but interesting nontheless…..
    http://quasi-cause.com/blowhard/index.php



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