I’VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN WORDS BY | MICHELE DARR
It’s hard to deny the power that technology has over our lives these days. There is literally nothing inanimate that cannot be digitally enhanced to interface with us on even the most subtle levels of human interaction. From smartphones to smart tvs to smart cars and houses, we literally only need to speak commands out loud to invoke everyone’s best friend, Siri, to enable a myriad of devices that then spring into action and meet our ever-expanding needs. It is common knowledge that cutting-edge technology has innovated and produced many solutions in the realm of medicine and healthcare. From pacemakers that monitor and control your heart rate, to cardiac monitors and other life saving devices, technology makes it possible to gather, record and transmit body signals to doctors who then read results and make appropriate diagnosis’ for treatment. It is clear that technology has a place at the table when it comes to treating patients and saving lives, so is it any wonder that in a global pandemic, tech giants are doing what they do best and touting digital solutions to the crisis? While it is certainly true that technology can lend itself positively to the process of diagnosing and treating diseases and ailments, too much of a good thing can also open doors to other more dubious uses. For instance, tech-giant, Microsoft owns not just one, but TWO US patents designed to turn human beings into walking computers, with the texts of both reading like dystopian episodes of “Black Mirror”. Patent number 6,754,472 is “designed to use the human body as a conductor of data and energy and integrate it into the network so that software, information and programs can be transmitted through a person’s skin.” Patent number WO2020060606 effectively seeks to transform the cash economy into a labor-tracking system, where a person’s level of productivity determines their rate of compensation through a “cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user and may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified.” Nowhere does it include or make allowances for those it labels “unproductive”....an unquestionably ominous omission in the shadow of a world history rife with the practice of eugenics, not to mention genocide. How all of this is connected remains to be seen, however, it is more than a little alarming that Microsoft and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently proposed to inoculate 7.8 billion humans with a COVID-19 vaccine they are rushing to develop within as little as 9 months (the rigorous and time consuming process of testing new vaccines for safety and efficacy in human applications usually takes 5 years or longer). This begs the question: Why the rush to a “cure” for a disease with a 99.75 percent rate of full recovery? What about tackling MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) a virulent and highly contagious type of bacteria that is resistant to several antibiotics and kills roughly 1 in 4 people who develop an infection? Ebola? Anyone? The number of questions running through my brain right now are innumerable however, the bottom line is that I’m highly skeptical of giving the world’s wealthiest tech company access to my brain and central nervous system. Once we are all physically connected to the Microsoft network, it is anyone’s guess how much autonomy we will retain, if any at all. I say it’s high time we put Gates and Co. on blast and ask more than a few more pertinent questions, wouldn’t you?
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