Embedded Microchips: Current and Future Applications

We live in truly exciting times. And this holds especially so in the sense of modern technological inventions. These inventions hardly need explaining as we’re all fully aware of what exciting new possibilities we have now with the help of modern technology. 

And one of the most exciting new fields of technological advances is introduced with the mixing of biology and technology. Enter embedded microchips. What the embedded microchips have the power to do is beyond comprehension, and the possibilities are limitless. And now, you will get to learn more about this exciting venture into technology by reading the rest of our article below. 

The Potential of Embedded Microchips 

Truth be told, there isn’t nearly enough research done on the subject of embedded microchips as required to show the true potential of these small devices. But we get ahead of ourselves. In order to expound on the subject at hand, we first need to define what embedded microchips are. These are small devices that can be implanted within a human’s skin, and they can then be used for a variety of different purposes. 

If you believe that embedded microchips are a new invention, then you’re wrong. The first microchip implanted under human skin was created back in 1998. This was done on Kevin Warwick, who was a professor in cybernetics at the time. He was passionate about the implications of mixing technology with biology, and he decided to be his own test subject. And the era of embedded microchips was born. 

Although many scientists and enthusiasts are very passionate about exploring the endless possibilities of implanting microchips under the skin, the idea is still relatively novel in terms of its application. 

In theory, there are endless opportunities and possibilities to use this technology and make life simpler, safer, and easier for people. Regardless if it’s for the purpose of playing blackjack online and being able to deposit money seamlessly with the tip of your finger where the microchip resides – or if it’s for entirely another purpose whatsoever, there’s no debate that microchips have the power to completely change our lives. 

Early Implementation of the Embedded Microchip Technology 

If you are informed of the latest news in the world of cyber electronics, then the chances are that you’ve heard about a company called Three Square Market in Wisconsin. The company specializes in vending machines – but this is not the centerpiece we’re talking about. 

The reason why we’ve mentioned Three Square Market is that this is one of the first companies in the entire world that have commenced a program for embedding microchips in their employers. The idea and goal of providing the employees with embedded microchips was to make payments on the vending machines with a wrist flick. This means that no cash or cards would be involved in making payments. 

And as it turned out, there were several employees that were interested in getting embedded microchips to use this technology and make things simpler for themselves. This experiment also helped do wonders for the company’s marketing efforts. Prior to this experiment, Three Square Market was a relatively unknown company. But now that the company’s employees have agreed to pioneer the embedded microchips frontier, so to speak, Three Square Market exploded, and people all around the world have begun paying attention to it. 

Proponents of this experiment, such as the company’s CEO and other officials, say that implementing embedded microchips technology for their employees is a way to merge biology and technology and get the best of both worlds. They are privy of concerns for the misuse of this powerful technology, but they’re convinced that this is nothing more than a witch hunt and that there’s little to no chance of this technology being abused. 

The company’s officials are also quick to note that the so-called “chipping party” was completely voluntary and that they in no way coerced the company’s employees to get chipped. And at the end of the party, as a token of gratitude for participation, the employees got a t-shirt that said: “I Got Chipped”. 

The Firm Opposition of Embedded Microchips 

It’s true that there are many people who are friendly towards the idea of humanity using the latest potential in technology and making embedded microchips available to people from all walks of life. However, it wouldn’t be fair to forget to mention the other side of the coin. Namely, there are just as many people and organizations all around the world that are firm, if not vehemently opposed to the idea of making embedded microchips a common practice. 

The opponents of this technology make the case that it can easily be abused by powerful people and organizations to subjugate the less powerful. And it’s not that difficult to imagine a reality when this indeed is what happens. After all, there are some countries, such as the United States of America that have labor laws that are in favor of the employer, not the employee. This means that employers have a lot more freedom and leeway in determining how they deal with their employees. 

As an example, there is a known case when an employer forced all employees to download and install tracing apps to track the employees when at work. One employee decided to delete the app as it proved to trace the employees’ movements even when they were at home. Once the employer learned of this, they decided to fire the employee who deleted the app. 

So, you can see just how simple it can be for things to spiral out of control and for people in power to abuse embedded microchips to the detriment of those less privileged. There are many ideas that have come up about the way people can abuse this power, such as tracing subordinates as an example. It can also be an invasion of privacy to a degree where outside parties can learn more about the person carrying the microchip. But these are all worst-case scenarios that, either way, we have to consider when implementing this new technology. 

Medical Applications of Embedded Microchips 

One of the potentially most beneficial facts about embedded microchips is that they can very well be used for the purpose of advancing medical science. If a person agrees to get an embedded microchip beneath the surface of their skin, then this microchip can provide the host and others with a plethora of medically relevant information. 

For example, the microchip can measure your pulse and give you accurate data about it in real-time. This can be very useful to people who want to excel in sports, as measuring your pulse and heart rate can help you learn whether you’re reaching your VO2 max, as well as other important parameters regarding your heart rate and breathing patterns. 

But there’s so much more to it than that. In a worst-case scenario, a person gets a heart attack. But heart attacks are known to be difficult to spot in many instances. The symptoms vary from shoulder pain to getting an urge to vomit to a variety of other symptoms that are not easy to correlate with heart attack unless you’re a medical doctor. Well, you have a microchip beneath the surface of your skin, so you can immediately check for any discrepancies in your pulse. So, since getting treatment as fast as possible in the case of having a heart attack is essential, it’s easy to see how embedded microchips can help save the lives of thousands of people. 

It goes without saying that you will be able to determine a lot more about how your body works in real-time with the help of embedded microchips. There are many other types of measurements that you can perform with their help. And this will not only help advance medical science in general, but it will also help improve the quality of life for many people. You could discover vitamin and mineral deficiencies easily. And you can increase not only the quality of your life in medical terms but also the longevity of your life as well. 

The medical applications of embedded microchips are truly exciting, and they can have a profound influence on the way medical science develops in the future. So, we hope that we’ll get the chance to experience some of the benefits of implementing this new technology in the near future. 

Everyday Applications of Embedded Microchips 

But what about the seamless little ways in which microchips can help make our lives better? Well, as it turns out, there are lots of them. As the smallest of all examples, you can set an alarm clock directly from the tip of your finger. Or you can access your phone with it, preventing anyone else that doesn’t have your unique microchip from accessing your phone. 

It’s very easy to use this technology to make fast, seamless payments without the need for any cash or cards. This is already done by many people worldwide–especially in Sweden, which is, as we’ve mentioned, one of the most advanced countries in terms of implementing embedded microchips. People who use this technology swear by its effectiveness and how easily they can use it to make payments with the tip of the finger. 

You can also open the front door to your house with the help of embedded microchips – or any other door for that matter. But the most convenient way to use this technology in this sense is to use it for the opening of your home. In regular scenarios, if anyone else should get access to your house keys, then they also would be able to come into your home. The use of regular keys is a known security risk as you would have to be careful not to leave the keys unattended. But if you were to use the embedded microchip technology, it means that only you (and the other people living in your home) will have access to your home by means of the front door. 

Do you want to travel? Or do you just need to commute from one end of the city to the other on a regular basis? In Sweden, the people who have embedded microchips subcutaneously can now use the chips as train tickets. Once again, you can show your finger, and the sensor will detect that you indeed have a ticket and that your ride is paid for. This is more convenient than having to pull out your smartphone from your pocket to show that you have paid for a train ride and a lot more convenient than having to wear regular train tickets every time you wish to ride a train and keep them in your possession by the end of the ride. 

Also, you can decide to store contact information on your microchip. You can even keep links to your social media profiles. You can have your medical history inside of your microchip – and we don’t need to explain again why this information can be crucial in improving the quality of your life and even your longevity. 

Long-story-short, there are myriads of different ways in which embedded microchips can improve your life by adding new functionalities for daily, mundane tasks. Everything that you do now in terms of the mundane tasks can be sped up and made to be more convenient so that you don’t have to lose time and effort on it. And this will leave you with more time and energy to deal with the things that are more important to you in your life. 

Embedded Microchips and Privacy Concerns

As exciting as this technology is, there is still a lot of opposition to it – for reasons that we have outlined in one of the previous sections of this review. And as exciting as this technology is, there’s still a long way to making it commonplace and making people trust its use. It’s no way near as applicable nowadays as it could have been if there was no opposition to it. 

But one of the greatest worries regarding the use of embedded microchips is, without a doubt, the fact that it can constitute a serious invasion of privacy. And if you have been reading this article by this point, it means that you’re well aware of just how these things can happen. At the very basic level of how microchips work, they are coded in a way so as to store information. And this can very well be personal information, medical information, information about run-ins with the law, employment information, you name it. 

And if a rogue organization or even a rogue government agency (as it has happened before) gets a hold of this information, then it would constitute a huge violation of privacy. One of the simplest ways in which it’s possible to infringe upon the rights of humans is to set up each and every embedded microchip device with an even smaller GPS locator device. Since the chances are that the majority of people who have microchips embedded under their skin are likely to keep using them for a long time, it means that someone, somewhere, will have access to information where the person is at, at all times. 

It’s safe to say that not many people are prepared to give this level of insight about them and their whereabouts, although there are undoubtedly people who don’t really care about any privacy concerns and would use microchips as it makes life more convenient for them. 

So, where’s the solution to this predicament? One way to go about it would be to ban the use of embedded microchips and let technology develop in other ways that are less conducive to invasion of privacy. But we don’t feel that this is the right way to go about it as it would stifle the development of technology and thus the improvement of life for people in general. 

What we feel that has to be done is that a new way of controlling the embedding and usage of microchips should be introduced. Recently, the European Union has introduced the so-called General Data Protection Regulation. And there are frequent audits for private and public enterprises in how they deal with personal data – to see if there are any infringements upon the rights to privacy of people. The penalty for abusing private information can climb as high as 20.000.000 EUR, or even more. And we have witnessed a shift in how people and organizations think about personal information in general. 

So, we feel that the same approach can be taken in the field of embedded microchips. There need to be lots of auditors and firm rulesets that will be obeyed by everyone so as to prevent any abuse of private personal information. Moreover, embedded microchips should be implanted only if the person has issued full consent. There mustn’t be any coercion of people in powerful positions towards the less powerful people. Workplace embedded microchip use should be under strict control, and the penalties for potential abuse of private information acquired with the use of embedded microchips should be very high. 

We feel that the latter of the two is the right way to go. The truth is that some risk of abuse of private information will always be there, but that’s a challenge that we as humans have to face with the advent of every new technology that promises to change our lives. Only if we implement the embedded microchips technology ethically and carefully can we reap the many benefits that it can bestow upon us without the risk of losing our privacy altogether. 

Embedded Microchips – A Brave New World 

Regardless of your personal opinion on the usage of embedded microchips, there’s no argument that there are countless ways in which we can use this exciting technology to significantly improve our lives. And we aren’t talking just about handling the mundane stuff quickly in our lives either. True, it becomes very easy to travel and purchase things and set up alarm clocks and use your phone and access your home with the use of embedded microchips. 

But the fact of the matter is that this technology can be used in great ways, too, to promote better health and help people manage even the ugliest of diseases better than ever before. It’s in the development of the medical application of embedded microchips that we feel that the progress of the technology should move towards first. 

And from then on, only imagination could stop us from thinking of new and inventive ways in which we can use the embedded microchips to improve our lives. It’s one of the very first steps that we have made in the field of merging biology and technology. There are tech moguls such as Elon Musk that state that the next goal is to embed microchips into the brain of people for an even greater merging of technology and biology and even more exciting applications. There are speculations that, at one point, we won’t even need to talk to communicate, but we could share our thoughts with one another directly. 

With this in mind, it’s easy to see just how strong the possibilities are with the embedded microchips technology. But the fact remains that we need to be extra careful with its application. As current statistics show, the number of people who have willingly been implanted with microchips is very low. There are only a few thousand people who have done this in Sweden, and perhaps a few thousand other people have done the same all over the world. So, it’s obvious that the majority of people are very much concerned and perhaps even afraid of merging with technology in ways that can also be devastating for our sense of privacy if the power of this technology is abused. 

But if we use the embedded microchip technology ethically, then the opportunities are great all around. We can’t wait to see what the future holds, and we hope that our lives will become a lot easier and a lot healthier than ever before – all with the use of embedded microchips technology.

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