Beam - checking on others
Is this George Orwell coming true in the personal sphere of life? It was in 2000 when SK Telecom introduced a service called "find friends" that lets others follow your every move, using a signal beamed from your handset.
Now, think 4 years later - we had the terrorist attacks of September 11, two times Bali, Madrid, London and so on. People are worried and want to know where there loved ones are.
The service offered by SK is now taking off, and is available in different modules. "One, costing $3 per month, will send a message with your coordinates to friends and family periodically while you're traveling. Another will automatically dispatch a text message to friends who get within a block or so of each other as they move around town. Yet another, costing 29 cents a day, will send a message if a person isn't at a specified place at a certain time and then allows the tracker to see the person's movements over the previous five hours. And 20,000 parents pay US$10 per month for alerts if their children stray from the route between school and home. The Korea Association of Information & Telecommunication reckons such services are growing by 74% annually, with revenues expected to triple in 2007, to US$1.54 billion, from US$500 million last year."
The question is - will the service expand to controlling employees or family members without any reason? Total control society?
(By Asia Business Consulting)
Now, think 4 years later - we had the terrorist attacks of September 11, two times Bali, Madrid, London and so on. People are worried and want to know where there loved ones are.
The service offered by SK is now taking off, and is available in different modules. "One, costing $3 per month, will send a message with your coordinates to friends and family periodically while you're traveling. Another will automatically dispatch a text message to friends who get within a block or so of each other as they move around town. Yet another, costing 29 cents a day, will send a message if a person isn't at a specified place at a certain time and then allows the tracker to see the person's movements over the previous five hours. And 20,000 parents pay US$10 per month for alerts if their children stray from the route between school and home. The Korea Association of Information & Telecommunication reckons such services are growing by 74% annually, with revenues expected to triple in 2007, to US$1.54 billion, from US$500 million last year."
The question is - will the service expand to controlling employees or family members without any reason? Total control society?
(By Asia Business Consulting)
posted by Andreas @ 11:22 am
<< Home