Your health is your responsibility, not your boss’, so it’s not their job to let you exercise on their dollar. Your employer would ideally prefer you to drop dead at the age of 65 or whenever you cease to become productive, so they don’t have to pay out your pension. Be healthy, live to 100 and stick it to The Man.

Of course, it’s extremely disturbing, but I find it difficult to accept that employees will go along with having sensors attached all around their body before they go into work. Nor can I see it being used for the horror stories you suggest (sexual arousal becoming a disciplinary offence, for example). In fact I can’t see management being able to handle being bombarded with such information for more than a day. Even the biggest control freak (and there are some big ones out there) would quickly be overwhelmed. I see a prototype being developed (100 comments on TechCrunch), some trendy company trialling it at one of their offices (200 comments on TechCrunch), and the next day management will quietly tell their employees to take off the sensors (no story, 0 comments).

But please, leave Orwell out of this. Society IS becoming more Orwellian, there’s no doubt about it. Look at the loss of civil liberties justified by the prosecution of a largely fictitious terrorist organisation – substitute Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda for Goldstein and the Brotherhood. Look at the prevalence of CCTV. Look at the multiplying government euphemisms. If we overuse the word “Orwellian”, then 1984, one of the starkest warnings against abuse of power by the state ever written, will lose all the power it had.

But…

Productive employees are a dying breed, so some sort of employee “healthometer” wouldn’t be a bad idea. Companies don’t pay employees to d*ck around on the web. Oh wait… maybe they do…

The context I was thinking of was that if you’re being monitored, say you got “excited” (that’s the PC-American friendly version) as another employee walked past, given that this could be detected could this in the future constitute sexual harassment? after all, you’ve thought something about that employee that if said would qualify, and the system would be able to tell.

“We already do this at employment screenings”

Maybe it was actually from the real Steve Ballmer!

If MS had written this movie:

Chrome Business Manager Robot: Everything will be all right. You are in my hands. I am here to protect you. You have nowhere to go. You have nowhere to go.

Honestly, who thinks they matter this much to their employers? Moreover, what employer, in his or her right mind, would chuck out the money for such a system? And what happens when the employee is fired or leaves for another job? No, it’s not cost effective at all.

And can you imagine how annoying this system would be. Paperclips popping up all the time, “It looks like you’re getting stressed.”

Calm down, everyone. It ain’t happening.

Hey Dyde I wouldnt mind using it for private use either I would get to see my heart rate levels for the day. As for use in public companies if it ever were to be implemented there would be more people required to ‘monitor’ the alerts this software patent’s data… and what if they are getting stressed

You seem to be frustrated?
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Are you sure you want to continue? How about quitting? Our severance packages are looking good!
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Illegal choice detected. You have been fired.

Jokes aside, this type of thing would probably work for low skill jobs (like fast food or retail) where metabolism and drug use are real problems, but higher skilled jobs employees will just ignore it. Tons of people use Facebook or YouTube at work and employers know about this, yet no one does anything. In the past, the employers have tried security cameras, keyloggers, trojans and so what? People still slack off at work.

Though I’d love to use this thing for private use to see my metabolism statistics and chart data.

if you don’t want it, go get a job with a manager that isn’t paranoid.