Convincing people to put computer chips in their bodies is a hard sell. Subcutaneous silicon has both the ozone smell of cyberpunk dystopia and the cornpone reek of the end-times Mark of the Beast. So it's a good thing for VeriChip that CEO Kevin McLaughlin has a background in sales. His company's promo scheme is brilliant: Sign up trusted, high-profile public figures for a VeriChip injection.
In 2004, the FDA approved VeriChip's human ID tag - a grain-sized radio transmitter that spits out a smidgen of memorized data on demand. Soon after, the FDA's former boss, Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, joined the private sector and became a VeriChip director. Now Thompson plans to get chipped, joining a former attorney general of Mexico, a New Jersey police chief, and the surgeon who developed the technology on VeriChip's beta-test squad.
This is a time-tested, medically benign device. Applied Digital, VeriChip's parent, has jabbed millions of these plastic-coated wonders into pets and livestock for more than a decade. Contrary to urban legend, they don't blow up under magnetic medical scanners, attract infections, overheat, or migrate inside the flesh. They just sit there, embedded for a lifetime and beyond, doing nothing - until they detect a radio beam from VeriChip's proprietary reader, in which case they cough up a 16-digit serial number. This code can be used to gain access to restricted buildings, rooms, and data, but the company is pushing the way it can link to a proprietary database containing a detailed medical history. If all goes well, one day the Global VeriChip Subscriber Registry will hold just about everyone's medical records, dispensing them on demand - via pricey VeriChip scanners installed in every hospital - for highly accurate diagnosis and treatment.
At this point the sci-fi glamour fades and the real-world problems start. For instance, as a platform for technology development, the device is a closed system. The data it holds is VeriChip's rude imposition on its customers, like a cattle brand. It's an arbitrary code connected to a database that the user can access only in limited, mediated ways. Moreover, the chip's storage capacity is minuscule. Sixteen lousy digits? Sure, it's a permanent record that goes everywhere you do - but so is a prison tattoo. VeriChip's embedded serial number is an ideal ID if you're stripped naked, unconscious, insane, or dead. Otherwise, you could just pull a card out of your pocket.
VeriChip is primitive in not only its implementation but also its very concept. It's based on the mainframe model of computing, on a centralized repository of closely held data that can be read only with dumb terminals (and by Big Brother). That Soviet-style arrangement makes no sense in the era of BitTorrent, Wi-Fi, and Google. If we're going to have data in our bodies, it should be plentiful, upgradable, distributed, networked, and fought over by the free market.
It's easy to imagine a technology that delivers all of VeriChip's benefits without the monopolistic drawbacks. Consider an implantable, adhesive, or inscribable device designed for the consumer's benefit, rather than VeriChip's business model. This friendly doodad would come with processing power, large storage capacity, read-write capability, and wireless networking.
Such an open approach would have two advantages: First, it would have a good encryption scheme to keep its contents private. Your identity would remain confidential and you couldn't be tracked, though you'd be free to exchange information with chips carried around by selected friends, business associates, and others with valuable data to share. Second, it would be beyond the implant company's domain. Think of an iPod model, where Apple provides an engaging product but doesn't control what content goes on it, instead of a cell phone model, where the Verizons and Cingulars aim to own a piece of everything that goes over their networks. What you do with your chip, what information it contains, and so forth, would be up to you. For good measure, it would also be relatively easy to remove, because users will outlive any quickly advancing technology.
Still, for all its shortcomings, VeriChip's bold appearance on the public stage gives me a subcutaneous itch. I never imagined I'd want such a thing, but I'm seriously thinking about getting one. Not for the cumbersome medic-alert features or theatrical security clearances, but as the 21st century's first genuinely transgressive cyberpunk fashion statement. I imagine swaggering up to a VeriChip scanner while proudly transmitting my own unique, outlaw serial number: 666 ought to do nicely.
Email bruces@well.com.POSTS
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Go Ahead, Chip Me!
