It’s called neuroergonomics, coming to an idiotic management team near you, eventually.
It’s about “studying brain performance at work and in everyday settings”. It’s sort of like surveillance, but much, much, dumber.
This tech is pretty basic. Its advocates use all the familiar sales pitches. There’s no indication of peer evaluation. It uses EEGs and metabolic monitoring, just a step up from last century. It also uses “transcranial magnetic stimulation”, which is used to provide “improvements during training”.
It’s also used for “mood control” and in treatments for depression, according to the Mayo Clinic.
If you think about the expression “at work”, a few things may have already come to mind, excuse the expression:
Most current jobs won’t exist anyway.
Strangely enough, cognitive training requires applied cognitive skills. How much cognition do you see in the world, let alone the workplace? Sounds more like a raffle.
Do you need neuro-anything when AI will do most of the work?
Neural science is in its somewhat brattish infancy at best.
This proto-level tech will be superseded pretty much immediately.
It’s likely to be extremely expensive. All that enthusiasm costs money, y’know.
You’ll be monitoring broke illiterates with the comprehension and literacy of an American.
There’s no information on whether management will be monitored.
The ethical issues are pretty well documented and very unimpressive. You can’t assume ethics will have any bearing on the actual use of the tech.
Imagine a performance review using this technology. It’s about the only thing that could be more farcical than the current performance reviews.
Highly stressed people in confined social spaces won’t do well with this tech. Lunatics, maybe. (It takes you six months to find out whether or not someone can do a job? Come off it, and you obviously can’t do your own job as a manager.)
Now’s my chance to endear myself to an entire sector –
Firstly – So what?
Who needs this tech?
The world seems to have survived without it.
Real-time monitoring of brainwaves seems like watching the dandruff pile up. Lacks depth. Imagine nitpicking about individual brainwaves.
It’s Management Science at its most mediocre.
(Have you guys ever managed anything at all, yourselves? Thought not.)
No thought seems to have gone into the environment in which this tech will be used. Add brain surveillance to the average hostile, insecure, partially insane workplace and what do you get? Nothing good, and nothing useful.
“A lawsuit with every headset” is far more likely than actual cost benefits.
The somewhat unsanitary stench of “B movie mind control cliches and plot lines” is hardly encouraging.
This tech could discriminate against individuals based on test outcomes. You can’t expect the science to help with that.
Remember this is the same science that will call anyone “neurodivergent” and pay itself lots to manage neurodivergence. The same science which has no comments to make on actual insanity and delusions at high levels.
How useful can this tech actually be to anyone?
There seem to be some performance metrics, mainly for people with medical conditions. Not in the workplace.
Why not?
Where are the usual “Aspiring halfwit Bozo Junior did a pirouette and back somersault on the differential equation and almost nobody got killed much”?
Imagine, O wary and wild-eyed reader:
You and your recently polished degree have had a stellar day at work. The strange owl-like neuro-person-thing even smiled at you as though you were worth smiling at. You take off your shower cap with electrodes and saunter effervescently back to your palatial cardboard box in Gangland.
Meh.
There’s too much to prove and nothing like enough proof.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
