idbadges

ID badges

by Bob on March 28, 2007

I am not sure when it started. But it did. Everyone wearing ID badges from work or university or the train or whatever on their person, especially on one of those fangled cloth or metal chain necklaces. All the time, not just when one is in the office or at university.

It used to be in my day, that one didn't need any ID card or badge to get into a university or office. One just walked in. Either they did or didn't know you. And at the university, it didn't matter. In my day, anyone could walk onto a university campus and go just about anywhere, anytime. Even if they had nothing to do with a university. One could even walk in on a course being taught in a classroom without having anything to do with the university. The presumption was that if you were there, you had a reason to be there. Even if it was a cosmic reason, unrelated to the course. It was up to the professor and most of the time it didn't matter.

Same with places of worship. They used to be open all the time for private prayer and services.

Not anymore. They are just open during services and closed other times, as if God was off-duty at other times.

I saw it happen in New York City. Firstly, in days of old, we had no ID cards. Then, insidiously, we were given a little paper ID card with no photo, but with a signature of someone high up in the company that you were an employee. The next phase, which I witnessed, was an ID pass-card which one used to replace keys in opening doors to the office or university. Then came the combination of picture card and electronic data in the card itself. Olivetti Labs at Cambridge in England had these way back when, what they called an "active badge" which they used in the labs. So one could look on a website and see just where the person was located at any given moment, in the laboratory. Cool. Sort of. Now we have gone the whole distance with a photo, electronic chip with biometric data of the carrier, and bar codes on the ID card.

And people just can't take them off in public. That's the eerie part. It seems to be our new identity.

I am not sure that was the full intention. But it has spawned that seemingly untoward societal effect.

Methinks that it is another case of people distancing themselves from other people. Perhaps not. But it is suspicious.

Or an even more clear example as a modern active badge is the ubiquitous cellular or mobile phone with its caller id and broadcasting capabilities. Receiving and transmitting information even when we don't even think it is doing so. And it would appear to be part of one's permanent anatomy now.

Little did the rock group The Who realise in their 1970 song "Going Mobile" that it would have a whole new twist of meaning in our most modern of times. The Who were simply singing about riding around in a car with no particular destination and an enjoyment and creative randomisation. Now the song could likely be a cell phone advertisement, not that society needs any convincing about the purported importance of having and incessantly using and needing a cell phone.

We are the ID card we are wearing. Like in the 1960s, in New York City, in Manhattan, the "Big Apple", one was where one lived. In Southern California, one was what one drove as a car. That's been changed.

The old "mom and pop" stores and restaurants are disappearing. And they were the quintessence of interpersonal relationships. When I was little, the grocer (mind you there was no supermarket) knew my parents and my grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and cousins. I hardly ever had to bring cash to purchase groceries. It was just recorded in a book whose accounts were settled with my parents at the end of the month or when they could pay. That's a much superior cashless society than the modern one of using cards with which, by seeming grand design or curious side effect, one hardly realises how much one is spending or has spent until a bill arrives, assuming it is not already deducted directly from our bank account.

And in so-called megastores today, one hardly ever gets to know the customers and people who work there in any meaningful way. That's also because the people who work in a megastore are interchangeable with any other megastore and frequently are moved from store to store regularly. And with that goes the bond and accountability between the customer and the purveyor.

Alvin Toffler predicted the modular man concept in his forward-looking book, Future Shock, which came out in 1970. A modular man interchangeable from place to place, situation to situation, and becomes, if not simply by definition, disposable.

Let's not even touch on the subject of ATM machines, digi-cash, transacting business and paying bills online, and ordering a basket of oranges online from around the corner.

So, in the end, I am not sure we will be able to even prove who we are anymore.

That is upsetting as one of the side effects of the miracles of modernity. Charlie Chaplin knew this well before its time and disdained automation. One simply has to look at his 1936 film, Modern Times, which says it all. We ought to be a bit more skeptical than we are about the onslaught of technology and automation, at least in balancing our lives.