Are you prepared to be bio-tracked?

I see a lot of people, lately, wearing those wristbands that monitor vital signs. But now some companies are requiring employees to wear these things as a way to monitor performance at work.

“They monitor the tone of voice, the heart rate, and then relay them to a dash board on their supervisor’s computer screen,” said Cultural theorist Lynn Parramore.

Parramore, writing for Al Jazeera America, reports that one company is using these to monitor stock traders for signs of over-emotional decision making.

“And they want to know, for example, when a stock trader is showing hormonal signs of stress,” she said. “You think that your hormones would be a pretty personal affair. Not anymore.”

If your company decides to take this approach, there isn’t much you can do.

“There’s a case in California of a women working for a company, and the company insisted that she have a device on her smart phone 24/7 that tracked her movements. She objected to this and took the application off her phone and she was fired,” Parramore said.

Of course, companies see this as merely a benign way for supervisors to offer help to stressed-out employees. I can just imagine how that meeting would go.

“Jim,” a manager would begin. “I called you in because I noticed your erratic heart beat and wondered if there might be a problem.”

“Yes, sir,” Jim replies. “That would be you and your stupid stress app!”

And that brings up an interesting point.

“Who’s to say that the surveillance itself is not causing the stress?” Parramore asked.

Exactly.

But take heart. The day will come when I can just have my data contact your data, and our smartphones can go into therapy without us.