Amazon has a new product designed to usher you into the Age of The Jetsons. Unfortunately, it isn’t a flying car or a condo on Mars like my generation was promised in grade school (side note: we wuz robbed!). The product is Amazon One, which will allow you to make purchases with the biometric data in the palm of your hand. Russell Brand does an outstanding job of analyzing this next step into a brave new world, allowing you to simultaneously laugh and cringe.
It is still a little early, but I am sure that there have been the obligatory statements that Amazon One is the Mark of the Beast. But I am old enough to remember when people said the Universal Product Code was the Mark of the Beast. As someone who studies religion (I’m not a scholar, just a guy who studies religion), I was intrigued.
So I started my trip down the rabbit hole at the official Amazon One site. Naturally, it goes to great lengths to extol the convenience of the service, with an emphasis on YOU! (Big Smile!) Visitors are invited to “unlock the world” with their palms. A little further down it says: “ Meet Amazon One, the fast, convenient, contactless identity service that uses your palm – just hover to enter, identify, and pay. Simply by being you.” You can “breeze through your day…Anytime. Anywhere.” You can choose to use the service when and if you want (for now).
The fact that your palm and accompanying biometric information are unique should safeguard you against theft. Until someone figures out a way around that. It is touchless, minimizing your risk of contracting COVID-19, monkeypox, or whatever the next disease-of-the-week is queuing up the government hit parade.
The “See how it works” page was a little vague, perhaps intentionally so. It is a brief primer on the basics of the system. First, you have to sign up, obviously. Then you hold your palm over a scanner, which maps the details of the surface of your palm and the even below the skin. That creates a “proprietary image” that Amazon uses to render your palm signature. Then you simply use the innocuous-sounding “Palm Pay” at participating vendors. You can scan four pages of those vendors from the bottom of the home page. Page five contains an invitation and a link for merchants to add Amazon One to their business.
Against my better judgment, I clicked on the “Get started now” button. The location links pop up again, since you go to one of those stores, and find the scanner. You enter the merchant number, the credit card you want to use and of course, scan your hand and turn over your biometric information, and into the cloud it goes. It’s as easy as that! Yay. And I am sure Amazon will protect your data unless it decides not to.
Does anyone remember Amazon’s Astro, your own personal robotic assistant? Sounds like just the thing we’ve been hoping for, right? Gizmodo reports that In Sentry mode, Astro patrols your home, looking for faces/things that it does not recognize and ostensibly reports back to you. It can also be paired with Ring. And by now you know that Amazon was sharing Ring information with law enforcement without notifying the owners. Ars Technica has the full story here.
Ideally, the internet of things is supposed to make our lives more convenient. But what it does is facilitate the surrender of our personal information and activities to the corporations, who sell it for a profit and, as Ring shows, provides it to the government when necessary. The problem with that is who decides when it is necessary and what are the parameters for doing so.
No one would argue that if Ring, Astro, or even Amazon One could nab a drug dealer, identity thief, or child predator, that would not be a positive. But what if you are engaged in an activity or a purchase that while not illegal or immoral, is one that the powers that be don’t like? Let’s say you are following the example of the parents in the Loudoun School District in Virginia and are viewed as a potential terrorist. How will your information be used then? Besides, products are meant to be used by you, not used to turn you into a product.
Because Amazon One uses the palm, it is easy to follow the trail to Revelation 13:16-17: “It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.”
Ardent atheists and many believers tend to forget that the writers of the Bible were perfectly capable of using allegory, metaphor, and even humor and satire. They were not simple, quasi-illiterate people. Most scholars date Revelation between 64-69 AD or 95-96 AD, depending on whom you ask. There is also some debate if the term “Beast” refers to Nero or Domitian, both of whom were known for persecuting Christians.
The book begins with the letters to the seven churches to whom the book is addressed, not only pointing out areas in which they need to improve but also providing them with encouragement in what would prove to be a very dangerous time. That isn’t to say that there are no lessons to be gained from Revelation. Every Christian should read the letters to the seven churches. Those messages are still valid today.
The internet is rife with movies, videos, sermons, essays, and even rants finding antichrists and signs of The End here, there, and everywhere. And that was the case even before the advent of the web. But Christ himself warns us that no one will even see the end coming. Probably because if people did “save the date,” they would do little else other than hole up with their freeze-dried food instead of actually living their lives. And the Mark of the Beast is a sign of allegiance or ownership, and “marks” were often used on documents and in some cases, in certain religious sects at the time.
If there is a religious component to Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta, it can be found in Matthew 4:8-10, which takes place during Christ’s temptation in the desert: “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”
The love of money and power is enough of a mark and makes selling your soul very convenient. And it has been with our leaders, our companies, and even with us for ages.
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