IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2014 - 74

Because it is now inside
my body and I use it just as
naturally as I use my fingers
or hands or anything that is
part of my body, it could be
considered part of me, and
my capabilities of human
being. (randall, rFID)
Those are my ears. Those are
my ears and I cannot take
them off... well I can take
them off, but it's not convenient. (Edith, CI)

oth randall and Edith
have implants. randall has two radio
Frequency
Identification (rFID) tags
implanted, one in each hand. He
is a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) chipper who uses the implant to access
his laptop, phone, home, car, and
other digital devices. Edith has two
cochlear implants (CIs) for hearing
improvement, one in each ear. Such
a CI is an array of electrodes that is
surgically implanted in the cochlea.
After several weeks of healing, an
external processor is connected to
the chip. Typically, people cannot
immediately identify what they are
hearing but need several months of
rehabilitation to recognize different
sounds and to understand speech.
rFID implants are passive chips,
identifiable by a reader from short
distances, without the ability to
send out signals. rFID implants can
serve diverse purposes. For instance,
in the healthcare industry implanted
rFID tags can be linked to medical
records and rFID implants can be
used for access control. randall and
Edith are two completely different
people, and they use their implants
for different purposes, but they also
have something in common. They
both have made a modification to
their body to improve their everyday
life, and both have come to consider
these implants as part of their body,
as being part of them.
In this article, we focus on
people such as randall and Edith;
74

people who have either a cochlear
implant for hearing improvement
or a rFID implant. Both types of
implants have caused controversy.
The main opposition to CIs comes
from the deaf community itself,
which with the capital D signifies
this minority culture. Deaf people consider themselves a sociolinguistic minority culture with
sign language as their language
[1]. They argue that CI undervalues the identity of being deaf: there
is nothing wrong with being deaf,
they are not disabled, and they do
not need to be fixed.
Controversies about rFID implants are more diverse and come
from different groups: they include
medical issues [2], [3], worries
about physical assault [4], issues
with privacy and the security of the
collected data [3]-[7], a fear for dehumanization [3], and worries from
Christians who consider the tag to be
the "Mark of the Beast" as described
in the book of revelation [8].
In the aforementioned controversies, the claims about implants are
often rather general and pertain to all
kinds of body chips; in addition, the
voices of the implantees themselves
are seldom heard (but for exceptions,
see our literature review below). In
this research we will therefore com-

"domestication" of implants, i.e.,
how they become part of everyday
life and the experience of selfhood.

Implants and
Domestication
Implants can have diverse functions,
ranging from containing medical records to being used to make
transactions, to identifying someone or increasing national security.
research has shown that people are
more willing to use medical implants
or implants for personal security than
implants used by the authorities to
combat terrorism [7], [9]. Such outcomes suggest that implants are not
problematic in themselves; the issue
is their purpose [10]. With respect
to rFID implants that can be used
for access control or identification
and authentication, the few relevant
studies suggest people's willingness
to use them differs according to age
(with younger generations being
more accepting than older generations [10]) and nationality (e.g.,
people from India are more likely
than people from the u.K., united
States, or Australia to perceive an
implant as a secure technology for
employee identification [11]). Individual accounts from DIY chippers
suggest they have their implants for
utilitarian reasons, as it assists them

Implants have diverse functions,
from containing medical records
to being used to make transactions,
to identifying someone or
increasing national security.
pare the experiences of two different
groups of implantees, DIY chippers
and CI users. Examining their experiences will lead to a better understanding of the acceptance or rejection of
implants in particular contexts by
particular people, and what these
implants mean to them. We use a
social shaping approach to theorize
the relation between users and technology, focusing in particular on the

in daily tasks such as unlocking
doors, or because they consider an
implant "cool" and part of a wider
process of "body modding" [12]. In
response to the various kinds of criticism towards rFID implants, Do-ItYourself chippers maintain that they
are more efficient and secure than
other forms of identification, and
that they can fit particular (but not
all) lifestyles [11], [12].

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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