Sweden office chips employees; Are we walking on the path to becoming cyborgs?

We’ve all seen a few movies with half-human, half-machines, are we ready to be involved in a plot like that? The Epi-center hi-tech office in Sweden has found a way for employees to never lose their ID cards or badges so as to not cause inefficiencies in their work. They’ve started implementing radio-frequency identification computer chips into their employees’ hands. That’s right, computer chips, we’re slowly becoming robots and this is a mere scratch on the surface of our paths to being cyborgs.

Now, some persons have already expressed their disapproval of this; most commentators have seen it as immoral. Which, from a certain point, I can see where they’re coming from. A lot of people worry about the human race trying to do things “we should not do” so as to not play God. The way, I see it, it’s efficient, it’s fast and it’s easy. As long as we’re not going all Frankenstein and making living things using energy from lightning, I see no harm and making the workplace a little easier, really.

So far, the chips ‘injected’ into the employees hands are used in the same way and ID card would be used, to open doors, to use the printer and photocopier. Sounds too advanced, doesn’t it? Well, it was bound to happen, all these things are already done with just simply scanning a piece of plastic with a barcode or number code on them, so why not make a chip that can do the same? Not to panic though, we’re not replacing our organs with printers just yet; no need to find a fashion trend that will match the half of your head being made out of metal so you can look good for your job promotion.

The persons behind the development of the ID chips have stated to the BBC technology reporter, Rory Cellan-Jones, who also got a chip implanted in their hand, that they hope this system can be improved to facilitate other tasks that require an authorization code such as replacing a swipe of the employees’ hands with an implemented chip to sign into accounts and therefor replace PINS and passwords. Another possible view for the hand chips that the persons behind it saw was using it to replace employee credit cards. Want to buy a sandwich in the cafeteria at work? Just swipe that hand over the scanner, buddy.

Won’t be long before governments want to us this new system, it’s be a much easier way get taxes done. However, the chief officer at the development center, Hannes Sjoblad, said he would feel much more comfortable if they could take more time to further understand and develop the merits of the system. Understandable, we don’t want everyone to be chipped and have it control the population and turn us all into a cyborg army, do we? Bit of an over-dramatic, apocalyptic concern but that’s a worst case scenario. The best possible scenario would be being able to buy donuts without having to carry around wallets with credit cards and money.