Maybe Magnus was right...
Oh bloody hell, where to start?
* Bizarre writer and friends get microchip implants Of the variety used to ID pets. They're cheap and apparently not all that hard to install or read, as Emma Mendes Da Costa and a few of her friends were able to get one implanted just fine in a local body mod shop.
The article's fun and tongue-in-cheek, but it indicates how a once-scary, science fictional tech is becoming increasingly common. So far it's mostly a novelty, because the infrastructure to read those chips on a massive scale doesn't yet exist. Mark my words, though, given our current times of turmoil, the potential for oppressive backlash on this particular technology is huge.
While I of course believe in people's right to install, tinker or put whatever they want into their body, there's no way in hell I personally want a chip of any sort under my flesh. Piercings are lovely, tattoos too, but there's an extra level of intrusion there that I'm deeply uncomfortable with.
Which brings us to the next item...
* First human 'infected with computer virus' Oh my, how I love our species. No sooner has a new technology started to become widely available than we begin figuring out ways to infect and corrupt it. Brilliant, and a process that happens with laws and attempts at repression too as well as machinery.
In this particular case, British scientist Mark Gasson, installed with the Cadillac version of the chip Da Costa and her friends received, managed to infect said chip and then spread the virus to surrounding machinery. Now we see a future where humans face mechanical viruses as well as biological ones.
Of course, then there's the matter of the oft-forgotten workers who are building those and similar objects of tech-fetish lust...
* Apple's Chinese suicide problem From Andrew Leonard, of the superb How the World Works, comes news that, after a spate of recent suicides, workers assembling iPhones in China are asked to promise they won't kill themselves.
Leonard writes that the situation is pretty dire:
I don't know about you, but if I was working 12 hours a day, six days a week, plugging circuit boards into Apple gadgets that sell for more than I might make in a month, and I looked out the window and saw nets being installed to keep co-workers from dashing their brains out on the streets below, I'd start to feel a little depressed. Top that off with an explicit corporate request to refrain from suicide and I'd be seriously questioning my career path.
However, he also notes that by Chinese standards, a job at the Foxconn plant is considered pretty good. In some ways, perhaps, Foxconn is lucky, Johann Hari's excellent piece on hideous working conditions in China reveals that labor uprisings often include kidnapping management.
Meanwhile, Apple's market capitalization just exceeded Microsoft's. I believe this sums it up.
Naturally, my Apple shit-talking is written on a Mac.
* Robots replacing Damien Hirst and your baby A creepily thought-provoking exhibit in (where else?) China highlights how easily the dreaded robots can replace a number of basic human functions.
Robots can have Hirst, but I don't want to live in a world where my rickshaw drivers ain't people.
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