Ever read the Personal Oz section of The Australian? We do. Where else can we read the marvellous economic columnist Emily Oster in print in this country, or the good stuff Chris Kenny writes?
The section took a two-week break over Christmas and New Year’s, and has been known to disappear on days where there’s a lot of news. It’s a curious mix of content. This week, for example, it featured Kenny reflecting on the parental capacity for love, and handy tips on the best blue-tooth speakers on the market. We in the Crikey bunker have taken to thinking of it as sort of like The Australian’s daily in-flight magazine. And avid readers of the Oz that we are, we’ve noticed a curiously high number of stories of a certain variety of late. For example, this on January 6 …
And this, in the same week:
And more …
And before the section took a holiday break, this on December 10 ….
And this a week earlier …
But it’s not just Personal Oz. The Technology section helps out where it can. For example, on December 2 …
And the month earlier …
Of course, given this rash of stories on wearable tech, there’s only one conclusion that we could possibly draw from this, and it’s that Rupert Murdoch has implanted his editors with wearable tech that wirelessly transmits his instructions for more wearable tech stories.
I mean, take a look at these comments he made at the Lowy Institute in late 2013. Holding up a smart bracelet he called a “Jawbone”.
“This is a bracelet that keeps track of how I sleep, move and eat — transmitting that information to the cloud,” he said while perfectly executing an all too brief show-and-tell. “It allows me to track and maintain my health much better. It allows my family and I to know more about one another’s health too, which means it encourages more personal and social responsibility — instead of just running to the doctor when we don’t feel well.”
What other explanation is there … this goes right to the top.
What else might these bright new blings do?
Carry ID and passwords for employers and banks?
Report (To whom? Employers? Security services? Organisations which have burrowed their way into the operating system?) on whereabouts of the wearer, minute by minute?
Monitor vital signs and thus record when the wearer is sleeping? Sexually aroused? Eating crap food?
Eavesdrop on conversations?
The list is potentially endless.
The ultimate app, of course, is a switch that turns off the wearer. A true kill switch.
Not this year, perhaps, but does that mean never?
“…it encourages more personal and social responsibility — instead of just running to the doctor when we don’t feel well.”
I’m painfully aware Murdoch has no idea how actual people exist, I just wish he’d shut up and stop reminding us all the time.
Almost as if the churnalism (when not charnelism)is merely spacering for the adverts.
No wonder that execrable rag has never, ever made a profit and sells fewer copies nationally that the Hogsfart Tribune.
@JohnB
Not bad at all. Except you forgot to mention that the natural progression of this type of technology is to eventually be inside the body and “implanted” in an area of heat conduction..ie..in the “Forehead” or in the right ” Hand”.
I note that Myriam used the word ” implanted” as well. Now that’s very interesting. I always knew she was a little bit special.