Thursday, October 06, 2011
Watson is my boss
Have a friend who works in a supermarket and he told me the other day that when the workers punch in now there's a handy device on the wall with a lens that scans their thumbprint. Fred Flintstone with his punchcard is so yesterday. You'd think a deli clerk or a part-time butcher were working for the CIA or the FBI or Interpol and I'm not even sure they do this (side issue -- why do so many women who work in supermarkets have man hands?). What's next, retinal-scans like in Minority Report? So the name of the company the supermarket contracted with is, get this, KRONOS. Why that? sounds too sci-fi to me, a little off I said and my friend gave me the deep background on Kronos. Seems in mythology Kronos was the father of Zeus and there was a prophecy that one of Kronos' sons was gonna do Dad in, kill him and take over so when they were born Kronos ate Poseiden and Hades. Who says ancient Greek/Roman mythology is boring? it's chockful of Sex and Violence. Anyways Zeus' mother knew what was coming so when she was pregnant with Zeus and gave birth she wrapped a big old rock in some swaddling clothes and Kronos ate it. Zeus later cut off Kronos' testicles and penis and threw it in the ocean where it gave rise to Aphrodite. You remember Venus in a pink shell don't ya? Now all that's fine for a college lit class but why would a major technical company choose such a name with such a negative bio behind it and why would a major food chain even do business with them? and how come the Union never got involved and issue a statement or even inform its members? It's because the New World Order'ers are Weird that's why, everyday is a Renaissance Festival inside their heads. BTW the term for scanning your thumbprint to start work and punch in and out for Lunch and go home later is biometric, remember that word and the whole stated rationale is that some workers are using other workers to clock themselves in using their punchcards. Old story new solution. Well that's the cover story anyway but my gut tells me there's more, much more to the story like that cat Willow that wandered all the way from Colorado to New York City and was lost for five years until some shelter ID'ed him 'cause the family had a microchip put in him, that's gonna be YOU in the not too distant future ("Don't worry m'am, Hank's just having an affair"). Now who's behind all this? I'd say our friends the Masons, those who like to worship statues of owls in the Bohemian Grove and stuff like that, a little Osiris action. Basically they're Nutz and now we hear that Watson is gonna look over some folks' medical records and make instant diagnoses, save time and money. The times they're'a gettin' weird:)
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I remember back in 2008 during the primary debates the subject of a National ID card came up and wouldn't you know that slickster Mitt Romney was championing it. In fact I'm most certain he even brought up that it'd contain your biometric info.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think the polls have this cat in front.
Nucking futz that's what it is.
"The times they're'a gettin' weird:)"
ReplyDeleteYou got that right. Lista was trying to make the argument that there are exceptions to the law of gravity because stuff floats on water and doesn't sink to the "ground" (i.e., ocean's floor).
It's gotta be the flouride in the water. Suppose that's why they want to ban bottled water.
KRONOS seems one of those services
ReplyDeletethat compartmentalises the more mundane employee details (from a
screen far away). One of their
specialties is absenteeism managment and we conspiracy
theorists might opine that they
can remotely direct a big mean robot to drag you out of sickbed
and in to work. As far as gravity
and things floating in water, those
objects are still obeying the law
of gravity, they are simply less
dense than water-the latter also
obeying gravity by seeking its lowest level. Thus spake Kronos...
Kronos is not a new system; we used it at New Hanover back in the 90's and it's still there today.
ReplyDelete'Kronos', of course, is phonetic for 'Chronos', which would be the root of words like 'chronometer' 'chronology' and other words that relate to time.
It's not a big deal. It's just a fancy timeclock. And the thumbprint thing is also used on medication (read:narcs) dispensing machines like the Omnicell and the Pyxis. Another way to prevent fraud (and diversion of drugs).
Anyway, at my job now we don't clock at all, we sign in and out, because we do everything the same way they did in 1958.
The times they're'a gettin' weird:)
ReplyDeleteZ-man: Where ya been...they've BEEN weird!!
Gotta love Greek Mythology, it beats Reality TV any day of the week!
;-)
Soap the masses are so gullible let me put it this way. If tomorrow the federal gov't said every citizen has to have a microchip but this is for the loftiest reasons, someone getting abducted, whatever I cringe to say that most people would wholeheartedly support it which brings me to Saty's comment
ReplyDelete"It's not a big deal. It's just a fancy timeclock."
to which I'd agree 'cept for the thumbprint scan. First we accept the biometric, then something else, then the nat'l ID card, then the microchip and it's all incremental. No privacy left, it IS a big deal and the protesters on Wall Street might want to throw that into the mix after some of them take a shower.
I dunno, I was always pretty happy I had to sign into the Pyxis with my fingerprint because passwords can be stolen and then next thing you know you're losing your license for diversion of drugs when you didn't do it.
ReplyDeleteAt least I always knew nobody was going to steal my finger. Not while the rest of me was still breathing.
Incrementalism about sums it up. We are so fucked. I may have start smoking again just to sort of move this process along.
ReplyDeleteSat I choose to find it disturbing and again we're talking about some of the most mundane jobs here (not yours). There's ways around everything. How 'bout some enterprising fellow selling fingerprint thumbcasts for everyone and then we can thumbscan our fellow workers in just like the old days. Again the "solution" proposed here is far worse than any problem it is alleged to address.
ReplyDelete'fingerprint thumbcasts'? I promise you no one is getting near my damn fingerprints, not when my job's on the line.
ReplyDeleteAll we're doing is clocking in, not boarding the Starship Enterprise:)
ReplyDelete+1 for that ^.
ReplyDelete