Big Brother Under Your Skin
The future is now. The microchip implant for humans is here. Free with every vente latte!

media

 I shall walk toward my car completely naked and keyless and laughing maniacally and I shall wave my arm over a tiny scanner and the doors will open and the engine will start and the stereo will begin to pump out "Highway to Hell" at a nice respectable skull-thumping volume.

And, lo, it shall be Good.

I shall stroll up to any ATM sans wallet and sans ATM card and I shall hold my arm over the screen and immediately withdraw four hundred dollars and then turn around to the big shiny vending machine and wave my arm again and get myself a nice bag of toxic neon-orange Doritos and a Diet Mountain Dew so I can poison my body in the American tradition without inserting a single piece of needless pocket change.

It is all possible. It is all just on the cusp. All we must do is welcome the sinister intimations and the positively draconian implications and say a big warm slightly terrified hello to the new, FDA-approved implantable microchip, coming soon to a hospital and a Starbucks and a bleak government agency and a human dermal layer near you. Very, very near you.

Have you seen it? Did you check out the pictures? Microchips the size of a grain of rice, programmed with all manner of data and inserted just under your skin and it's all completely legal and government approved and it's happening right now. I mean, who knew microchipping your pet and implanting livestock would lead to this? Oh right -- everyone, that's who.

The wait is over. No more Philip K. Dick sci-fi fantasia, no more far-off Orwellian Big Brother. We are there. Or, rather, here. This new chip is already being implanted in medical patients for the alleged purpose of tracking their health needs and speeding treatment and it is right now being used in the flesh of employees working in high-security areas to ensure they don't swipe top-secret pens and classified pads of Post-it Notes.

Which is to say, you have been warned. Human skin has already been penetrated. Alarms are already sounding because it's one of those things wherein you can't even fully comprehend all the weird and creepy and potentially dangerous possibilities, but it doesn't even matter because all you need to hear is those four magic words: Microchip. Implant. Human. Flesh. And all your intuitive senses go, whoa.

Oh sure, the initial benefits will appear harmless and helpful. They will say the chip will mostly be used for health reasons and they will say it's to be strictly monitored and there is no way the tiny implants could possibly be corrupted because it's just a cute little itty-bitty microchip containing cute little itty-bitty bits of helpful medical data to help doctors diagnose you ha ha sucker.

This is what they will say. This is how it starts. This is how it always starts.

But that, of course, is never where it ends. Already we can imagine the likes of John Ashcroft, salivating noisily at the idea of inserting similar chips directly into the skin of every swarthy foreigner and every tofu-sucking liberal commie protester while they sleep so the government can track your movements and erase your Social Security number and stomp down your door the minute you buy a used copy of "How to Make Cool Thermonuclear Warheads in Your Bathtub." This much is a given.

But it's what happens after that where things get sticky, treacherous, spiritually appalling. After all, personal information is a form of knowledge and knowledge is power and the new chip is all about who knows what about whom and the government would dearly love to know it all, especially about you. What's stopping them? What's preventing every citizen from getting a nice implant and considering it a wondrous boon? Not much, really.

Think it can't go that far? Think the populace will resist, or they can't possibly do this without our knowing? Think again. The first step is getting the public to accept the new technology as benign and beneficial (i.e., it's for health!). The next is to make it appear all fun and commercial and ultraconvenient (i.e., score drinks at cool clubs without money, just like they already do in Spain!)

The third step is, well, whatever the hell they want.

So then, let us flip it over. Let us embrace the evil, given how we appear to have little choice. Let us make our wish list now and spell out our all-American capitalist desires for this new technology because we might as well get some cool features and fabulous benefits out of it as we all blithely sacrifice our personal identities at the altar of murky and unsettling progress. After all, evil always has an upside, right?

Like, for example, subway rides. Bridge tolls. Movie tickets. Just wave your arm to the sensor, pal. Airline check-in? Rental car? Proof of ID? It will all be in your arm, baby. Shoe size, blood-alcohol limit, contact-lens prescription, voter registration, grocery-store discounts, phone numbers of all your former lovers, alimony-payment status, PINs and electronic-bike-lock combos and car-seat-adjustment preferences and oh my goodness let the imagination run wild.

It is a world of incredible possibility. It is a world where you will become instantly traceable and locatable and with a tweak here and a wire there we can now follow you via GPS no matter where you are on the planet. Until now, you've always had to carry some sort of largish device with you. No more.

The dynamic has changed. The ancient wisdom has fallen. No longer are we a delicious dance of mind and body, spirit and flesh. Meet the new triad: we are now spirit and flesh and technology. Get used to it.

It will, I predict, become a fabulous new trend. The chips will become fashion accessories, invisible status symbols, like dental fillings stamped with the Gucci logo or cool tattoos on your kidney. Your credit limit will be implanted into your skin. Your access to private clubs and shops and spas will be granted depending on the status of your chip. Keyless-entry implants will be free with purchase of any new Jaguar.

Another Botox injection? Certainly. Just wave your face over the scanner, please. New Range Rover? Absolutely. Just waves your penis over the screen. Entrance to this exclusive club? I'm sorry, your chip says you're plebeian scum making less than 22K a year and you seem to enjoy weird books and illicit sex and mild but annoying acts of sedition and anarchy. Please go away.

We are mere inches away from making all this happen. We are mere millimeters from giving it all away, to just saying screw it and letting Wal-Mart and Starbucks and McDonald's and Amazon and the Justice Department and the corporate monoliths have their way with us once and for all and inject us with all manner of cute little microchips to make our shopping better and our wallets less cluttered and our lives at once easier and more convenient and far more ominous and more completely compromised and fabulously corrupted than we could ever have hoped.

Look. The future is no longer coming fast. The future has raced right up to our faces and is screaming its shrill greeting and is penetrating our very flesh on a relatively painless surprisingly affordable outpatient basis. The technology has finally arrived, quiet and calm and unassuming as a grain of rice.

And as we all hop in this speeding handbasket, just imagine how nice it will be not to have to carry any cash.