In today’s modern world of business, who wouldn’t want productivity, efficiency, and convenience rolled into one? Each day we make use of modern tools to achieve these standards, striving to customize technology to best suit our needs and goals. At times, we literally embed technology in our lives to further push its potential. For instance, there is a Swedish company which offers an option to its employees to have a microchip implanted into the back of their hand for purposes of using the photocopier, opening security doors and even paying for lunch. While the majority of workers used contact-less cards to achieve these, this company, Epicenter, went beyond the usual way of doing things and a step further in its application.
The chip is a size of a grain of rice, where personal information is stored in order for the machines to recognize you, and uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) for data transfer and communication to special receivers, similar to contact-less cards. The process of being chipped was facilitated by a Swedish bio-hacking group called BioNyfiken. While this is still a work-in-progress and people get mixed reactions and feedback, and certain important issues are expected to surface on the utilization of embedded technology, we are actually looking at the future of human-machine convergence. Imagine walking into your office and saving time in doing mundane tasks because you possess an upgraded level of control to machines around you. Those cool moves that we see in high-tech movies aren’t that far from reality after all.
SOURCES:
http://www.cnet.com/news/swedish-office-gets-under-employees-skin-with-rfid-microchips/
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31042477
