The realm of science fiction once more begins to intersect our reality.
We already do this to pets. Micro-chip them so we can track them down, should they get lost, or call up the owner’s contact info so wandering dogs and cats can be returned to worried families.
So isn’t the next logical step utilizing this with ourselves? This article talks about two workers who were tagged by radio ID chips, a way the company made sure only those with the need to know could access certain vaults of restricted info.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/01/chips.humans.ap/index.html
Think of the advantages (for some of you, this is me playing devil’s advocate):
If you get lost, you could have an internal GPS system that can orient you to safety. Chips could store medical info which would let doctors process you into a hospital in an emergency. Financial and identification info could be stored, so you’d never have to worry about missing your credit card at the grocery, driver’s license at the bar or passport. It’d all be right there for the scanning.
Some people might go so far as implementing them into the criminal system (kind of an upgrade to those anklets that they already use) to keep track of convicts.
The flipside of this, obviously, are those who are scared that this is the big step where the government can start tracking our lives on an even more minute-to-minute basis. As with many things, it could start with innocent intentions, but quickly be twisted into a invasive, perhaps enforced device to monitor and control the masses.
And yes, as the article points out, there are those groups who see these chips as fulfilling the infamous 666- Mark of the Beast role.
Plus, there’s the whole “hacker” issue that has to be taken into account. If you basically carried all of your personal info, financial access and medical history everywhere you went, that’s a treasure chest waiting to be cracked open. Think of it like someone using wireless internet technology to steal your identity as you brush by them on the street. So long as they had the right scanner…
Anyways, a lot of this stuff is still in the science fiction realm, but as with many things in that genre, it is peeping over the horizon, and is soon going to be jumping into our laps, probably well before we are ready to deal with it.
But say, hypothetically, that all the bugs were ironed out. There were no security risks, and all you had to sacrifice was a little of your anonymity by registering in the system. Would you still get yourself chipped for the advantages it might provide? Or is our paranoia too deeply ingrained?
I see that smile.
Urg,
I remember me and my school friends discussing something like this over 20 years ago. Then we decided that they’d never be able to make the chips small enough…
On the other hand, it is now EXTREMELY easy to imagine people 100 years hence wondering what all the fuss was about: “Yes,” they will say, “I am worried about Congress authorising the police to scan me on the street, but I SIMPLY can’t imagine how I would cope if I had to carry documents with me everywhere – can you think of anything more ridiculous?!”
Buddy, we’re already history, and the future will laugh at us just the same as we laugh at the fools who came before us…
I suppose that’s true. Something about the inevitability of progress. People used to laugh at the idea of everyone owning a personal computer, for instance. So is it a triumph of convenience and efficiency over privacy? There are those people these days who work to live entirely “off the grid.” I wonder if that will continue to be possible and still take part in any level of society today, or whether it will require being totally independent and self-sustaining for things like food, clothes, shelter.