But there's one big difference – the workers wear caps to monitor their brainwaves, data that management then uses to adjust the pace of production and redesign workflows, according to the company.
The company said it could increase the overall efficiency of the workers by manipulating the frequency and length of break times to reduce mental stress.
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China is Mining Data Directly from Workers’ Brains on an Industrial Scale
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(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 02 2018, @11:57AM (2 children)
so, how long before implants are cheaper than the caps?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @12:26PM
That depends on whether or not the procedure is covered by insurance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:04PM
Cut costs by making the hats out of aluminum foil.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @12:04PM (1 child)
Visions of this intrusive, manipulative, coercive Technological–Industrial Complex are what drove to violent craziness the mathematical prodigy, Ted Kaczynski. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @03:40PM
Sad that he didn't think to just trigger a global nuclear war. He could've set back the destruction caused by civilization a few hundred/thousand years, at the expense of all that fallout.
(Score: 3, Touché) by RamiK on Wednesday May 02 2018, @01:22PM
Break frequency and overall throughput should be interesting. Especially on and off Ritalin.
Also, maybe sell home versions for kids doing homework? American parents will buy those by the boatload...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday May 02 2018, @01:36PM
OK. Not creepy at all.
So how many warnings or bad days before you get sacked? Could be the same with or without sensor tho. Not like someone that fucks up constantly or costly would be kept around sensor or not. If they use it to rotate staff around between jobs I guess it could be fine.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 02 2018, @01:53PM (7 children)
This is pretty interesting stuff, and really shows how different the Chinese approach is to the American approach.
Apparently, in China, they seek to minimize worker stress so as to increase efficiency and reduce costly mistakes. That seems to be a sensible goal if your objective is maximizing long-term profit.
In America, however, it seems that the goal is to maximize worker stress, for what end goal, I'm not sure. We can see this through things like the wholesale adoption of the open-plan office, and the way Amazon is reported to treat their workers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @02:23PM
Haha, don't drink too much of the koolaid. China isn't exactly the bastion of worker rights...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @03:32PM
The American way is for waste people to be dumped outside cities and kept on disability and drugs.
China isn't that developed yet. Their waste workers tend to hang out in the cities looking for something to do. The government doesn't want that to be revolution.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:33PM (1 child)
In America, worker stress is maximized to increase worker burnout and force employee churn, which helps prevent accumulation of seniority and the benefits thereof, like increased pay, vacation time, ect.
(This is for any job with sufficiently low/cheap training time and cost of failure.)
This new approach in China will likely lead to more forced, unpaid time off and firings than anything else... or a market for unstressed people to wear sensors for others and fake sensors for the workers, whichever is easier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @10:40PM
Only for low value jobs.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:35PM (2 children)
So do you normally believe the justifications issued by politicians and corporate spokesmen? You might want to reconsider such an approach.
What *is* interesting is that he appears to expect people to accept his statement at face value. This, however, could easily be an artifact of translation or paraphrasing.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:55PM (1 child)
No, I don't believe them, however, let's forget about that, and let's assume that these corporate spokespeople are all being completely honest. This guy talks about decreasing workers' mental stress. When do American corporate spokespeople ever talk about that? Never. Instead, they laud the open-office concept because of "collaboration!!!". I've never heard American corporate spokespeople ever say anything about decreasing the stress of their workers. So even if you do believe they're all lying, the Americans aren't even trying to get you to believe they care about it. Surely you don't believe, then, that decreasing mental stress is actually some kind of secret goal of theirs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @10:47PM
Some people actually seek out situations which may appear stressful to others. I have always sought out high stress positions as they pay more and the stress does not bother me as long as I know I am doing my best work that I can.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @04:44PM (2 children)
China is the future! The dystopian cyber punk hellscape future we all dread. Of course the US is there as well, we just like to hide it a lot better. Credit scores instead of Social scores, corporate censorship instead of state censorship, etc. Basically the US likes having the illusion of freedom, no matter that it would require hundreds of millions of dollars to actually create competitors and that it is sometimes not even possible due to regulatory capture.
The US will follow China's lead soon enough unless it can pull its head out of its ass and start demanding true representation from the political system. We already have lists to restrict certain people, basically the entire infrastructure is in place and being used already. Boiling frogs is what we are, and if you believe TMB / Khallow / VLM / Jmorris they are probably turning us all gay as well!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 02 2018, @08:51PM (1 child)
A government will never work in the end, because it's based on the philosophy that "Might" makes "Right".
Pointing a gun in someone's face as saying "Do as I say" is not capitalism; rather, capitalism is pointing a gun in someone's face and saying "Do as we previously agreed", which of course implies that your agreement should have provisions for dispute resolution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 03 2018, @02:23PM
My god! A series of contracts post that didn't spam or sound overly angry. Bravo!