The BBC News article that inspired this post, “Office puts chips under staff’s skin” by Rory Cellan-Jones, can be found here:
It’s happened to many people who are part of the working world, particularly those who work in a large building or complex that houses many employees during the working hours of each weekday. They’ll walk up to the entrance of the building, where the front door is meant to be unlocked by a scanner or card reader of some sort, and then they realize that they left their ID card/keycard/security badge at home. Alright, to be fair, maybe this doesn't happen overly often, as I’m sure that many people with jobs eventually adapt to thinking of their workplace ID as another part of themselves, like their wallet, phone, or house keys, and as such remember to take it with them every day. But the potential to forget is still there, such as if someone was running late for work and left their house in a hurry. For this reason, people have been trying to come up with ways to simplify the workplace ID system – and as evidenced by the article I linked above, at least one alternative method has gained enough attention to warrant actually being implemented in the working world.
As discussed in the article, Epicenter, a new high-tech office block located in Sweden, has implemented a rather different method of providing employees with building access: a chip under the skin, located between the thumb and index finger. Staff members are required to have such chips implanted; should they need to enter the building or utilize shared office equipment such as photocopiers or printers, they’ll simply need to wave their hand in front of the scanner, and they will be granted access.
As highlighted by the article’s author and narrator Rory Cellan-Jones, the implementation of this kind of system raises a big question: are people ready to become this intimate with technology? Hannes Sjoblad, the chief disruption officer at Epicenter, argues that "We already interact with technology all the time…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." But Mr. Cellan-Jones had such a chip implanted in order to understand this technology, and he pointed out that it really isn’t all that intuitive; he had to twist his hand at a weird angle just to make the office’s photocopier work.
I think it’s safe to say that to many people, having someone stick a small, hollow, pointy, almost scoop-like tube (I have seen them before) with a microchip at the end into your hand is a rather unsettling idea. It’s amazing to see how much technology has grown, to see that a chip full of information can just be stuck in someone’s hand so that they can wave their way through the office door. But the process, while allegedly simple, has to be done with some surgical precision, and there is plenty of room for error. Plus, there’s Mr. Cellan-Jones’ observation that it doesn’t always work right away. If I were to have someone stick a chip under my skin (which I would not want to do), I would be at least partially satisfied if I knew for sure that it would always work right. Without such a guarantee, however, I would say it’s hardly worth it, and I’m sure most people would agree.
It is true that technology has become a part of us; at the beginning of this post, I listed cell phones in the category of things that people always take with them when they go out, alongside wallets and house keys. Whenever there’s a power outage, people panic much more than they used to, because we have become much more dependent on technology to help give structure to our lives. We are close to technology all the time – but I would never want to be THAT close. It’s downright unnerving, and the means of inserting the chip is actually sort of barbaric. I wouldn't want to spend my nights worrying about how I sleep, so as not to apply too much pressure to the microchip between my finger and thumb. I wouldn't want to go swimming with the knowledge that there’s now a small quantity of electronics in my hand. I wouldn't want to try cracking my knuckles to relieve tension, only to feel a little bump and remember that there’s a solid little block of silicon and plastic under my skin. Would you?
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