Lately I’ve been hoping that a modern day equivalent of a mood ring would show up so that you can tell at a glance if someone near you is interested in you. But instead if we get a technological version of a ring to wear in the near future it may be a privacy ring. One that makes us invisible to prying electronic eyes.
As Fast Company puts it:
“Imagine this: You’re marching toward a protest when a police van rolls up. There are whispers that the mayor has chosen to crack down on public dissension, and you’re worried that your peaceful demonstration could be misconstrued as something else. If it is, your face will be captured by a random camera, recognized, and filed as a problematic citizen—perhaps it will even get you arrested.
So do you don a mask? Nah. You just flip a switch on your ring. And anyone from the government to random advertisers can no longer use your face to identify you.
This is the idea of Me.Ring, a provocative new concept out of the design firm Argodesign. Me.Ring is basically a connected switch that you wear on your finger. When you’re open to your data being collected (from your face, your location, or just about anything else you can imagine), you switch it on. When you want to stay anonymous, you switch it off. The ring is essentially an Incognito Mode for real life, a means to opt out of your actions being recorded and analyzed forever.”
Considering that society is trending towards a surveillance state with cameras and facial recognition technology monitoring our every move counter measures like the Me.Ring could prove to be invaluable resources in the years to come.
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