Wednesday 20 October 2004 By Mark Morford - San Francisco Gate Columnist
Big Brother Under Your Skin
The future is now. The microchip implant for humans is here.
Free with every vente latte !
I shall walk toward my car completely ****d 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 ****ny 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. (article ci-dessous)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2004/10/13/national0948EDT0497.
DTL
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 fa****on 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 ***** over the screen. Entrance to this
exclusive club ? I'm sorry, your chip says you're plebeian
s*** making less than 22K a year and you seem to enjoy
weird books and illicit *** 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 cor****ate 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 ....................................................
More :
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/10/20/notes102004.DTL&nl=f
ix
-------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday 13 October 2004 By Dietra Henderson AP Science Writer
FDA approves use of implantable chip in patients
to pass medical information to doctors
WA****NGTON (AP) - The Food and Drug Administration
on Wednesday approved an implantable computer chip that
can pass a patient's medical details to doctors, speeding care.
VeriChips, radio frequency microchips the size of a grain
of rice, have already been used to identify wayward pets and
livestock. And nearly 200 people working in Mexico's attorney
general's office have been implanted with chips to access
secure areas containing sensitive do***ents.
Delray Beach, Fla.-based Applied Digital Solutions said
it would give away $650 scanners to roughly 200 trauma
centers around the nation to help speed its entry into the
health care market.
A company spokesman would not say how much implanting
chips would cost for humans, even though chips have been
implanted in some, including Scott R. Silverman, the
company's chief executive officer.
The company is targeting patients with diabetes, chronic
cardiac conditions, Alzheimer's disease and those who
undergo complex treatments like chemotherapy, said
Dr. Richard Seelig, Applied Digital Solutions'
vice president of medical applications.
It's the first time the FDA has approved medical use
of the device, though in Mexico, more than 1,000 scannable
chips have been implanted in patients. The chip's serial
number pulls up the patients' blood type and other medical
information.
With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted
under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20
minutes and leaves no stitches.
Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code
-- similar to the identifying UPC code on products sold
in retail stores -- that releases patient-specific information
when a scanner p***** over the chip.
At the doctor's office those codes stamped onto chips,
once scanned, would reveal such information as a patient's
allergies and prior treatments.
The FDA in October 2002 said that the agency would
regulate health care applications possible through VeriChip.
Meanwhile, the chip has been used for a number of
security-related tasks ...............................
More :
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2004/10/13/national0948EDT0497.
DTL
On the Net:
VeriChip : www.4verichip.com/index.htm
Remember Ashcroft wants to scan our e-mail and check our library books and
tap our phones ?
http://www.boomchicago.nl/images/Voting_Machine.wmv
http://www.boomchicago.nl/images/osablpr.wmv
http://www.boomchicago.nl/images/AT5finLG.mov
|
