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Perhaps a digital body can go ‘a few digibods too far’

♣ Technology that hints of Orwellian futures

Update: Kurzweilian thoughts on “medical monitoring” via an implanted chip under your skin

Yes, the Internet of Things is on its way to an Internet of Everything, as we have been ruminating about here at DigiBody, but apart from the upcoming IoE economy that’s being projected in the trillions, let’s mull for a moment on privacy.

As we track wearable tech and mHealth, or connecting via apps to your ‘smart’ home, car, or whatever smart product is coming along in the IoT world — we will reserve the right to appropriately warn of over-industrious uses of technology — e.g. today, on Super Bowl Sunday in America, the land of the free, try this one on — an RFID chip that’s a wireless ‘handshake’ in effect so you are allowed to enter your new hi-tech office complex… and since you’re so equipped with your RFID chip, a deal is made that “all you have to do is… wave your hand” at the local sandwich shop’s check out counter to buy your lunch… and why stop there, think of all the RFID ‘handshakes’ doable in a newly connected world envisioned, beginning in Sweden at the “Epicenter”… the Epicenter??

Now there’s a name a developer could love.

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Chips before the SuperBowl via the BBC

Want to gain entry to your office, get on a bus, or perhaps buy a sandwich? We’re all getting used to swiping a card to do all these things. But at Epicenter, a new hi-tech office block in Sweden, they are trying a different approach – a chip under the skin.

[It’s just a] tiny RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip, about the size of a grain of rice… [It doesn’t hurt when they ‘install’ it]

Before trying my chip out, I wanted to know more about the thinking behind it. Hannes Sjoblad, whose electronic business card is on his own chip and can be accessed with a swipe of a smartphone, has the title chief disruption officer at the development. I asked him whether people really wanted to get this intimate with technology.

“We already interact with technology all the time,” he told me. “Today it’s a bit messy – we need pin codes and passwords. Wouldn’t it be easy to just touch with your hand? That’s really intuitive.”

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Intuitive?

The ‘Chief Disruption Officer’ says it’s “really intuitive“…

DigiBody says “it’s a chip too far.”

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“A rather fearsome looking tattooist, inserted my chip,” he explains. “First, he massaged the skin between my thumb and index finger and rubbed in some disinfectant. The he told me to take a deep breath while he inserted the chip. There was a moment of pain – not much worse than any injection – and then he stuck a plaster over my hand.”

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dys·to·pi·a
disˈtōpēə/
noun
noun: dystopia; plural noun: dystopias
  1. an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.