IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 8

metaphysical and existential impact on the human person.

Recent Non-Medical
Implantable Use Cases
An overview, not exhaustive, of some
of the more significant implant usecases in the last few years, includes:
GoogleX's swallowable chip [25],
dangerousthings.com (myUKI re branded as Vivokey) [26], [27], Tim
Cannon [28] and Wetware Groundhouse [29] NorthStar and Circadia,
the Swedish chipping parties [30],
biohacker Hannes Sjoblad [31] and
co-founder and CEO of Epicenter
Patrick Mesterton [32], Charlie Warzel of BuzzFeed and his epayment
chip [59], the launch of DeusEx
(USA and Australia) [33], chipmylife.
com [34], Andreas Sjostrom (implant boarding pass) [35], Biohax
International (Swedish body piercers) [36], SJR Ail Priority custom ers (Sweden) [37], Biofound ry's
Fou nde r Me ow Me ow a nd his
Opal Card implant [38], 32Market
(Wisconsin, USA) [39], [40], etc.

This is the normalization of the
weird into the wonderful into
the "cannot live without."
Among the implantees seem to
be a growing list of journalists
who are getting implanted for the
millisecond shock factor of their
online audiences. This trend will
soon subside, t he spec t acle of
something going into the body "for
the first time" completely replaced
by the potential flood of active nonmedical use cases. Journalists will
also soon figure out that their body
capacities are limited, and any future
implantable will likely be taking up

important "real estate" space. To
the non-techy onlooker, this might
seem like some form of human
digital revolution (aka augmented
humans), or some ver y extreme
form of self-harm [41]. But then
what of claims, from large companies like Medtronics who foresee a sensor implanted in everyone
[42]? This is the normalization of
the weird into the wonderful into
the "cannot live without." Companies like Cochlear in 2017 have
described the potential to fuse their
hearing implantable device with a
service that delivers entertainment
like music straight to the ear [43].
Why not? This is the blurring of the
prosthetic with the amplified, the
medical with the entertainment as I
had once noted in a TEDXUWollongong scenario [44].

it harder for consumers to believe in
something other than what they are
projecting. It's time to vote with our
wallets, not just our voices [60].
Perhaps the bigger issues at hand,
as I am constantly reminded by my
biohacker friends, is not whether
or not some government will forcibly implant us all for social security purposes and surveillance, but
what is presently happening with
the mass scale big data collection
strategies using social media intelligence, CCTV, behavioral biometrics
using facial recognition and visual
analytics to monitor human activities, the keystroke-level tracking of
end-users by third parties on Internet websites, the use of in-bound
technology devices that conduct ICT
surveillance and home monitoring,
and even fitness trackers we carry
alongside our mobile phone that are
set to control our health insurance
premiums. I will always riposte, wait
till all of these are applied together
as in the full-blown Uberveillance
scenario [45], [46]. We predict the
integration of invasive token and
non-token based payment schemes
for two-factor authentication (e.g., Alibaba's use of facial recognition payment systems in KFCs in China [47]).
Already one trial that Baidu led at
the beginning of this year used facial
recognition technology to predict
customer orders [48]. Now that's one
way to speed up transactions at the
point of sale, and potentially ensure
calorie controlled intake as well!

Lies, Damned Lies,
and Statistics or Is It?
It is very difficult to predict what
t he f ut u re ha s i n store for u s.
Table 1 shows s ome of t he key
surveys to have been con ducted over the la st 14
years. Perhaps most conf u s i n g i s t he d i s p a r i t y
of the findings between
the studies, though they
have all measured different
things, and have sourced
respondents in various markets with varying levels of
technology awareness. As
readers we need to be aware of the
message being sold to us by companies with vested interests, and
a variety of emerging stakeholders.
Survey bias is ever present and as
consumers we need to always ask
the fundamental questions before
we make our own minds up about
the latest technology rewards. This
is our future. We will make of it what
we will. But the strategic techno-spin
boiler engine rooms will just continue to grow in sophistication making
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

What Kind of World
Do You Want to Live In?
As my last editorial as Editor-in-Chief
of IEEE Technology and Society
Magazine, I leave you with these
final thoughts. What kind of world do
you want to live in? I hope together
we have continued to trail-blaze this
question as a community of conscientious voices in my six years as
EIC. Please never underestimate the
∕

DECEMBER 2017

http://www.dangerousthings.com

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