Expanding beyond their use in applications like IoT household appliances and pet location tracking, sensors and chips are now being embedded in people, too.
Last fall, The Wall Street Journal reported that as many as 50,000 microchips designed for people have been sold globally. Each microchip kit includes a tag and an injection tool, and is priced at around $100.
More Australians have had chip implants than in any other country, but significant numbers of other people in European nations like Sweden and the Benelux countries have also stepped up to the plate for implants.
According to what I hear, the chip embedding process is easy and painless, as the devices are very small – not much bigger in size than a grain of rice.
But not everyone is thrilled about this latest “turn of technology.” And as a result – and hardly surprising – politicians are starting to become involved.
In a move aimed at trying to put the microchip genie back into the bottle, lawmakers in the state of Nevada have introduced legislation that would make it a felony to require a person to be implanted with microchips such as an RFID (radio frequency identification) or NFC (near field communication) devices.
The legislation doesn’t seek to outlaw the practice – but rather to make it illegal to mandate any such activities targeting any single individual.
Under certain circumstances, I can see how micro-chipping a person could not only be beneficial, it could be a life-saver. Consider situations where people are potentially in danger of kidnapping, or susceptible to violence from spousal threats.
No major opposition to the Nevada bill has been logged – so far. Still, I can’t help but think that this is yet another lame legislative attempt to restrain the inexorable march of technology — one that will come up woefully short.
Water finds its own level – and that’s never more true than in the realm of technological advancements.
But what are your own thoughts pro or con? Please share your views with other readers here.
Nones Notes 
Timothy McVeigh kept telling the FBI that a microchip implanted in his rear end was impelling him to act.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if certain criminals actually had implants as a form of surveillance — perhaps instead of incarceration.
And maybe I’m snarky to suggest it, but perhaps we can have our cellphones implanted, so we don’t have to view each other constantly bent-over, lined up like ravens on a powerline, pecking away!
State legislatures have actually been busy banning the involuntary implantation of these devices for awhile now.
According to the Great Book of Wikipedia, similar legislation has already passed in California, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Virginia and Wisconsin.
The Georgia Senate also approved such a measure, but Georgia’s House of Representatives did not take it up.
Timothy McVeigh was peddling “fake news”; microchips like these are actually implanted in the human hand.
I can already hear the rallying cries and see the bumper stickers: “You can have my microchip when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!”
I can certainly see the value in such an implant. A lot of concerned families would probably jump at the opportunity to keep track of a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia who has a habit of wandering off.
But the ethics are so murky; where do you draw the line?
[…] blogged before about how micro-chipping has been morphing from appliances and pets to […]