Under Your Skin

Under Your Skin

Credit card companies are hopeful that the latest chip technolgy will catch on with the general public. If this latest idea is at all similar to the others, they are not likely to have much success. The idea is not brand new, but it is still cutting edge. Businesses are prepared to ask people to no longer carry credit, ATM or debit cards anymore, but be implanted with a small chip under the skin. This chip will then broadcast a radio frequency and when place under a scanner at say an ATM, it will immeadiately know who you are.

The idea is catching on with many companies and in some cases governments. The US military has been placing chips in its soliders for years now. The idea may soon be reaching the general public. Why keep track of people with identification numbers when you can just put a chip in their arm?

Many would argue the positvies here are to great to dismiss. No one will ever get their credit cards, money or identity stolen again. The oppostion would argue differently, however. Theives could easily find the frequencies to the chips and redirect the signals to ATMs and have acces to accounts. The really ambitious thieves may go so far as to try to remove the chips (or even the body parts they are in).

There is also the issue of invasion of privacy here. If these chips are anything like peoples personal home computers, it wouldn't be long before advertisers began taking advantage of them. There could be tracking software implemented to learn where people spend there time. Billboards could recover transmitted signals and the ads would cater to whoever walks nearest to them (a moment seen in the movie Minority Report). People would no longer be alone anywhere. It would truely become an Orwellian Big Brother society.

For the benifits that some people may recieve, the dangers out weigh them. Companies can try their hardest to market this ambitious product to the public, but I like most people probably just don't like the idea of being 'chiped'.

-gabe