Big Brother is Watching You, Yay!

We’ve all read Orwell’s 1984 (and if not, stop now and read it- your life is incomplete otherwise). We all know the terrifying possibilities that an omniscient government provides, but what if it’s by choice? What if we wear tracking devices on purpose? We already have GPS on our phones and in real estate, we encourage each other to activate the GPS for our own safety. Many of us have navigation in our cars with a trackable GPS chip. What if every one of us put a chip in our purse (or murse for dudes) that broadcasts our exact location?

That day is already here. Seriously.

Introducing the RFID chips which stand for Radio Frequency Identification Devices like what is inside the Tollway Pass in your car. The chips are being voluntarily worn by students, engineers and staff at George Washington University in an effort to expand social networking, according to Truemors. That’s dumb, you say. No it’s not, I say.

Wearing a chip to track yourself in an effort to promote social networking is only the lazy man’s way of Twittering “I’m at Starbucks” or “I’m still in bed.” As a parent, I’ve thought of creating a chip myself, so I think this is awesome. As a user, I still think it’s cool for the following reasons:

1. I already volunteer all of my information online, there isn’t much about me besides my SSN that isn’t available.
2. I already send updates from my cell to Twitter about where I am, so any ol’ stalker can see.
3. If it is my *choice* then it’s not as threatening as if it was mandatory.

Call it a “social networking” tool, make it voluntary, keep Big Brother out of it, and you’ve got a pretty cool project going on. I can see how this could very easily get out of hand and how people could fear this tool, but we already use GPS in our phones and cars, and we blog every life detail while we Twitter our whereabouts, so what’s new other than it’s automated? I’m lazy, so sign me up!