Once again, I get to add something else to the 鈥淕eorge Orwell must be rolling in his grave鈥�-file. Across the pond, over in Sweden, a place that is usually vaunted, with the rest of Scandinavia, as a bastion of progress and forward thinking, a small segment of its working population is getting chipped.听
By 鈥榗hipped,鈥� I literally mean they are getting implanted with small computer chips. If that doesn鈥檛 immediately fill you with a great deal of anxiety for the future, or even the slightest pang of the heebie-jeebies, I commend you, because you clearly have stronger stomach than I.
Employees for a startup called Epicenter are having chips the size of rice grains syringe injected into their fingers, essentially turning them into real-life cyborgs. These things, according to the growing number of people working with Epicenter, serve the same function as key cards; opening doors, turning on printers and even making small purchases.
I want to ask them so many questions. 鈥淲hat do you do if, or when, you leave Epicenter for another job?鈥� 鈥淲hat happens if your body rejects the chip? Will it pop out of your finger eventually, like a splinter does?鈥� 鈥淲hat happens if it gets a virus? Will you get sick too?!鈥� 鈥淲ill it be more difficult to get through airport security?!鈥澨�
Apparently the folks at Epicenter don鈥檛 share my misgivings, as they actually hold parties and make an event out if it when one of their fellow workers joins that little budding borg colony growing in Stockholm.
The people who get chipped talk glibly about how nifty things are for them, with the fancy door-opening smoothie-buying prowess they gain from their chips, but all I can think of is how uncomfortable it must be to have the same technology implanted in you that is used in virtual dog collars.
There are also plenty of real life issues with this kind of technology that go well beyond the quirky folks over at Epicenter. I can only imagine the potential to use this kind of technology, the same way it is used on dogs, to monitor and identify humans.听
It鈥檚 not that much of a stretch. The chips issued to employees who get them at Epicenter already are capable of tracking those who have been chipped. They鈥檙e also are able to show when those people get to work, and what they buy when they are there.听
Colour me paranoid, but I would prefer if my employer (or really, anyone for that matter) was not able to trace my every single footfall from where I go to grab my coffee on a Monday morning to where I end up on a Friday night out on the town.
And those chips are only the tip of the iceberg. Google and Facebook, like it or not, know an awful lot about us, to say nothing of the vast hordes of information even telecom companies that sell us our phone plans have hidden away, stored for their easy perusal.听
What do you think makes ads for clothes or goods you search for suddenly, conspicuously start popping up in advertising space, when browsing the Internet, days and weeks later? Companies pay good money to get access to the your habits on the web, so they can advertise and sell you things.听
Even operating systems for your computer or tablet like Windows 10 have features that specifically are designed to monitor your every keystroke to see what you鈥檙e looking at on the Internet. Geeks who love the Halo franchise were听 thrilled when Microsoft released its AI 鈥渁ssistant,鈥� Cortana. But Cortana has ulterior motives, and that shady chick is relaying everything to do under her watch to Microsoft and everyone who works with Microsoft, who wants to sell you something. (Be prudent, be like me, and disable Cortana, if you use Windows 10.)
It鈥檚 not even big businesses that are after your info, either. Software companies are getting better at developing technology that can identify people on sight, running the image through social media profile photos until it finds a match. And with technology like the Google Glass, pairs of glasses that function like a small computer, there are some pretty scary possibilities out there already.
At the end of the day, we鈥檙e nowhere near some disaster Skynet terror scenario, but all of this eventually is going to lead to some very nuanced, very uncomfortable moral quandaries to puzzle over.
听
