Staying Connected: Body of technology

SU SA N F A R R IN G TO N You never know when you plunk yourself down on a public mode of transportation just what will unravel before your journey ends. As the Long Island Rail Road chugged along during a hot, sticky day last summer, I chatted with a fellow commuter. He was an engineer for a big computer company in New York. Once we got acquainted, I knew he was doing more than helping me kill time and take my mind off the inconvenience (and my boss’s face) as the train would prove late once again. This man was telling me about a future he was helping to design. One key element of our conversation was the use of silicon chips. Chips, he explained, had been embedded in employee identification tags at his company. These tags were worn around employees’ necks. The chip communicated to a corporate system that would clock in when employees arrived in the morning, when they left at night, and just where and for how long they went for lunch. His company already employed such devices, and he was certain that a majority of the big corporations would follow suite and employ similar practices within the next few years. The tagging idea, at least from a corporate perspective, makes sense. Much like global positioning systems (GPSs) that allow companies to track their assets—like courier trucks—at all times of the day through the use of satellite, ID tags with silicon chips are capable of tracking employees. Such corporations using these techniques, or those considering doing so, would likely point to an increase in productivity, a decrease in company stealing, and the overall safety and security that such a tracking technology provides. I was explaining to my commuting companion that not so far back, I had a long conversation with Peter Cochrane, the director of research at British Telecom, one of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world and a partner of AT&T. As part of his position at BT, Cochrane was responsible for testing new technologies that would be the foundation for future services. He told me there will come a day when chips are not just worn around the neck, but are actually implanted under a human’s skin. When I scoffed at such an idea as merely science fiction, Cochrane offered up that he himself would be testing out such a human chip and looked forward to the opportunity. Not surprisingly, this revelation that I thought was mindboggling, sci-fi movie material was met with much agreement on the part of my train buddy. Nodding emphatically, the computer company executive said that such practices will become common within a few years time. As unbelievable as it seems— having a silicon chip inserted in your body—there are many signs this is becoming a reality. To say the infiltration of machines into our lives is becoming pervasive is like saying the world is round. But it’s equally undeniable that the shift is going from humans working around a stationary computer to the com-