While we haven’t quite got to the point where we’re traveling in flying cars or mastered the concept of teleportation, there is one scary-futuristic thing that is slowly becoming a reality.
Microchips.
Yes, those small devices that can be implanted in your skin and provide whatever piece of information you’d like them to give. It may be a thought that you would laugh at in the past, but one Wisconsin company is becoming the first to cross the digital Rubicon and offer to implant them in their employees.
Here’s the report from KSTP in Minneapolis that chronicles a company called Three Square Market. The company provides software for break room kiosks and the chip will allow patrons to quickly pay for their purchases. It will also help employees enter their building and log in to their computers.
Of course, microchips can start there, but the possibilities are endless. You could store literally every piece of your personal information on one of these things and have it embedded into your body. Credit card? Driver’s license? Social security number? Favorite pizza order? All of it can be placed on a tiny chip that can be implanted within you. This is the first instance of a company in the US providing microchips for employees, but it definitely won’t be the last.
The whole idea of microchips seems a little out there, but then again, there was a time when we never thought we’d have a cell phone that could take a picture and then post it so anyone in the world could see it.
Would you really want all that information comfortably in one place, though? Would you want a microchip in you that could find you wherever you were on planet earth? That might sound great for your car keys or your remote control, but I’m not sure I want that for my own body. What if it gets hacked? What if there’s a technical malfunction?
While there is limitless potential for convenience, there is also limitless potential for things to go horribly wrong. Like, Itchy & Scratchy Land wrong.
[KSTP]
