Woman Gets Microchip Implant in Hand to Replace Office Keycard
Emilott Lantz proudly reveals that she is the future’s handmaiden. (Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)
Like any survival-centered human, I let technology pull me along to nirvana.
Why, I now have an iPhone 6. Though I confess that when I took one look at Google Glass, I was reluctant to take two looks at Google Glass.
I’m not sure, though, that I would ever allow electronics to be — how may I put this? — inserted inside me. Permanently, that is.
Yet this is what one Swedish woman has done to make her obviously difficult life less onerous. As Sweden’s The Local reports, 25-year-old Emilott Lantz from Umeå has a vast, existential problem. She really doesn’t like carrying keys around.
So she found a completely forward-thinking solution: She had a rice grain-sized microchip inserted in her hand last week.
Some people’s instincts will undoubtedly tell them that only those with a brain the size of a rice grain would do such a thing.
But Lantz, who works for IT consultancy firm Codemill, believes such people may have limited imaginations. She told The Local: “I don’t feel as though this is the future. This is the present. To me, it’s weird that we haven’t seen this sooner.”
In one sense, she is right. If there are people prepared to walk around in cyborgian glasses or talk to their watches, at least a microchip shows discretion.
And she’s not the only one to let this particular tech get under her skin. She attended the Sime tech conference in Stockholm, where participants were offered the procedure for free. Around 50 members of a Swedish biohackers group called BioNyfiken had the same procedure done in the past month, according to The Local’s report.
The handchip technology works in a very simple manner: You place your hand against a scanner and you’re either admitted or your hand begins to glow, then it burns until it falls off. (That sanction was my own futuristic fantasy.)
Lantz seems to feel a frisson at the idea that she will be able to walk through her office door without having to remember keys or a passcode. She told the Local: “I’m super stoked to have had this done. I can’t wait for the property agent to get back to me about letting me into the system so that I can use my chip instead of my keys to get into the office.”
I suspect she’s quite a character.
On her Instagram feed, she presented a lovely collection of hashtags: “#implantat #rfid #biohacking #biohacker #biohack #humanplus #cyborg #umeå #uå #chippare #codemill #tech #womenintech #wit.”
Would that we all could be humanplus.
Her AboutMe page describes her like this: “Instead of becoming an engineer, I became awesome (still a nerd though!).”
Nerds will do what nerds will do. Currently, what they will do is to try to make the rest of humanity just like them.
I look forward to the day when humans don’t bother deciding whether they find each other attractive or not.
Instead, they will simply wave to each other and see if their microchips are compatible.
