The "The Future According To LDub: Part II - RFID" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Wondering what it would be like to be able to go to the grocery store and with a swipe of my hand across their scanner pay my bill.  Or stop to fill my car with gas and with a swipe of my hand across their card reader be able to dispense gas into my car.  Or maybe heading to the bank to transfer money from my savings to checking account and being able to do it without getting out of my car with a swipe of my hand while at the drive-in.  And, on the way home I could stop at McDonalds and buy a Big Mac meal with a swipe of my hand on their portable reader at the drive-in window.  Kind of scary, isn't it.  But then again, pretty neat to be able to do all my errands without having to pull out my wallet.  About half a year ago in a town in Wisconsin about 50 employees in a tech company agreed to have RFID (radio frequency identification) chips placed in their hands.  

Chips placed in your hands are the future for know!

These chips were approved by the Food and Drug Adminis- tration in 2004.  The chip is about the size of a grain of rice and is placed between your thumb and forefinger.  The employees were told that the chip is not GPS enabled and does not allow for the company to track workers and does not require a password.  At the time the chips cost $300 each and were implanted by licensed piercers.  The chips would be used to enter through security at the office, log into the company's computers and be able to buy a snack with a swipe of the hand.  The chips are virtually unable to hacked into and the chip is not connected to the internet.  So, are you surprised that about 80% of the employees opted to have the implants?  We used to have hand-cranked phones before we had wall-mounted phones with rotary dials before we had cellular phones.  I guess you do know that you can now be tracked everywhere you go by your iPhone.  Very few people today don't have a cellular phone in their purse or pocket.  So what's the big deal with having a chip stuck in your hand.  In the 1950s hand-held external pacemakers were used to control the heart and were eventually embedded into the body.  My dad had one for years to help regulate his heart rate.  I'm positive he had no idea he could have been monitored or tracked if someone had wanted to do that.  Pets have been implanted with a chip for years now to help find them if them become lost.  Tests were done on dogs who had implanted chips to see if there were any medical hazards to the procedure.  Some developed cancerous tumors at the injection site, but the chip itself did not allegedly cause cancer.  So, you just knew humans would be next to get the chips.  Do you really believe that the company in Wisconsin is not able to track their employees?  And, so what if they do.  What type of information could they gain from tracking them; where they shop or whom they visit or if they go to church or not.  So long as the chips can't broadcast a visual signal to a monitor.  Now, that would be scary.  You know that RFID chips will probably be mandatory sometime in the future if you plan to buy a gun or certain types of narcotic medicines.   The chip could be used when we have socialized medicine.  Will the government be able to use your embedded chip to tax you or see what political party you belong to?  Hey, the list could go on and on and on.  Are you ready for it?  If it happens in my life time I figure it will make it much easier to register at the hospital or maybe pay my bills.  Oh, the advantages of technology.  Yeah, but I still enjoy shifting gears in the car and talking on my landline telephone!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.