IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 7

wrote Tips for Time Travellers in
which he described a microchip
implant akin to something he noted
would be a "soul catcher chip" [8].
The year Cochrane's monograph
was published, the Auto-ID Center
consortium at M.I.T. formally began
research on the "Internet of Things,"
a term coined by former Procter
and Gamble assistant brand man-
ager, Kevin Ashton [9]. Cyborg 2.0
followed on March 14, 2002, when
Warwick had a one hundred elec-
trode array surgically implanted
into the median nerve fibers of his
left arm [10]. Here Warwick showed
the potential of brain-to-computer
interfaces (BCI) but also the poten-
tial of brain-to-brain interfaces (BBI).
During this whole period, I was
busy working on projects related
to telecommunications deregula-
tion across Asia, seeing firsthand
the right angle turn from voice to
data, and the explosion of mobile
telephony and later 3G mobile infra-
structure. The world was changing
rapidly and I knew I had to finish
my Ph.D. as soon as possible. As
chance would have it, I headed
for academia.
Post the dot.com crash, we were
all shocked by scenes such as those
of September 11, 2001. It did not
take long for people to emphasize
the importance of security, and how
to address risk on a large scale. Com-
panies like Applied Digital Solutions
[11], and later VeriChip Corporation
[12] and Positive ID [13], described
the potentiality of a unique ID being
embedded in the right tricep. This
was no myth. Applied Digital Solu-
tions received U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) approval for a
personal health record identifier in
2004 [14]. The CEO of the VeriChip
Corporation (and later PositiveID),
Scott Silverman, pointed to the
many benefits of such an implant-
able. He noted the possibility of
such a device being tethered to an
SEPTEMBER 2017

electronic bracelet being able to
help first responders get out of hope-
less situations, like a burning tower
that was about to collapse. There
were 2996 people killed and more
than 6000 others wounded in the
September 11 attacks. Silverman
emphasized the potential for sav-
ing people who were incapacitated
and could not tell first responders
about their condition [15]. Situations
could range from people having an
allergy to penicillin, diabetics requir-
ing insulin, or even wander alerts
for those suffering from dementia.
VeriChip was successful in some
high profile chippings, such as New
Mexico's Attorney General Rafael
Macedo and some of his staff [16],
in addition to the Baja Beach club
chain in both Rotterdam and Barce-
lona [17], and later in the small num-
ber of voluntary employee chippings
at Citywatcher.com [18].
Apart from my thesis in 2003
[19], numerous papers written by
academics became available on the
chipping phenomenon in 2004 [20],
and 2005 [21], including a landmark
monograph titled SpyChips [22]
written by Dr. Katherine Albrecht
and Liz McIntyre. There were several
attempts to chip Alzheimer's patients
at aged care facilities in 2007, which
did not go ahead en masse [23].
Christine Perakslis and the late Rob-
ert Wolk wrote pioneering papers
on microchipping humans after the
VeriChip was FDA approved [24]. In
the same year, the EU Opinion N° 20
on "Ethical Aspects of ICT Implants
in the Human Body" was published,
written by The European Group on
Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), chaired by the Swedish
philosopher, Göran Hermerén, and
adopted on March 16, 2005 [25].
Among the Group were Professors
Rafael Capurro and the late Ste-
fano Rodotà.
For the greater part of the mid
2000s and later, we observed a
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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

growing number of biohackers who
chose to dabble in "DIY" (do-it-your-
self) implantable technology. The
Tagged Forum was set up to accom-
modate fellow tinkerers at the begin-
ning 2006, which became the "go
to" place for learning about how to
tinker with RFID implants and what
applications to build with them. The
Forum soon attracted more atten-
tion than it cared for, and was target-
ed with posts proclaiming members
were heralding in the "mark of the
beast." As a result, The Tagged went
underground, so they could be left
alone to continue tinkering. Build-
ing on cross-disciplinary study from
as far back as the 1980s [26], MG
Michael coined the term "uberveil-
lence" in 2006 denoting embedded
surveillance devices, while teach-
ing at the University of Wollongong
[27]. An entry on uberveillance later
appeared in the Macquarie Dictionary in 2008 [28], proliferating quick-
ly across the web including in The
New York Times [29]. In that same
year, Pawel Rotter et al. published
their paper titled: "RFID implants:
Opportunities and challenges for
identifying people" in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine (vol. 27,
no. 2).
In 2007 M.G. Michael interviewed
Professor Kevin Warwick [30], and
biomedical device expert Professor
Christopher Toumazou, Director of
the Biomedical Institute at Impe-
rial College London [31]. Among
the popular implantees of that time
were Amal Graafstra, Jonathan Oxer
and Mikey Skylar. Graafstra was the
author of RFID Toys, and was fea-
tured in an IEEE Spectrum issue
in 2007 [32]. We invited him as a
speaker to the IEEE International
Symposium on Technology and
Society in 2010 [33] which was ded-
icated to implantables, and co-wrote
a paper on implants published in the
Proceedings of the conference [34].
An excellent debate on the future

7
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017
