Life imitates art and creeps me out
In 1997, my artist friend Eduardo Kac, had a "pet locator" chip implanted in his leg. He produced a performance art piece which showed him being tracked by the chip and also showed the surgery that it took to implant the chip.
Eduardo wanted people to stop and think about the implications of technology for society and our lives as humans. Just because the RFID (radio-frequency I.D.) chips could be implanted in living organisms as tracking devices, didn't mean they had to be implanted. It is one thing to put an RFID in a pet (though I am not totally cool with that) or in an Alzheimer's patient who might get lost and hurt. But requiring workers to get implanted smacks of those Sci-Fi stories about prison planets and such. Yet here is story from the L.A. Times about legislation and RFID implants in workers.
Tackling a dilemma right out of a science fiction novel, the state Senate passed legislation Thursday that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin.
Source: latimes.com
Life appears to imitate art. Maybe badly.
Tags: BLOCKS | devices | dilemma | Eduardo Kac | Employees | EMPLOYERS | Fiction | humans | identification | identify | implants | legislation | life imitates art | Mandatory | NOVEL | palo alto | passed | requiring | senate | Simitian | thursday | workers
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