It's 10 p.m. You may not know where your child is, but the chip does.

The chip will also know if your child has fallen and needs immediate¹ help. Once paramedics arrive, the chip will also be able to tell the rescue workers which drugs little Johnny or Janie is allergic² to. At the hospital, the chip will tell doctors his or her complete medical history.

And of course, when you arrive to pick up your child, settling the hospital bill with your health insurance policy will be a simple matter of waving your own chip - the one embedded³ in your hand.

To some, this may sound far-fetched. But the technology for such chips is no longer the stuff of science fiction. And it may soon offer many other benefits besides locating lost children or elderly Alzheimer patients.

"Down the line, it could be used [as] credit cards and such," says Chris Hables Gray, a professor of cultural studies of science and technology at the University of Great Falls in Montana. "A lot of people won't have to carry wallets anymore," he says. "What the implications are [for this technology], in the long run, is profound."

Indeed, some are already wondering what this sort of technology may do to the sense of personal privacy and liberty.

"Any technology of this kind is easily abusive of personal privacy," says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "If a kid is track-able, do you want other people to be able to track your kid? It's a double-edged sword."

Tiny Chips That Know Your Name

The research of embedding⁴ microchips isn't entirely⁵ new. Back in 1998, Brian Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at Reading University in London, implanted a chip into his arm as an experiment to see if Warwick's computer could wirelessly⁶ track his whereabouts with the university's building.

But Applied⁷ Digital Solutions, Inc. in Palm Beach, Fla., is one of the latest to try and push the experiments beyond the realm of academic research and into the hands - and bodies - of ordinary humans.

The company says it has recently applied to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin testing its VeriChip device in humans. About the size of a grain of rice, the microchip can be encoded with bits of information and implanted in humans under a layer of skin. When scanned by a nearby reader, the embedded chip yields the data - say an ID number that links to a computer database file containing more detailed⁸ information.

Chipping Blocks

Most embedded chip designs are so-called passive chips which yield information only when scanned by a nearby reader. But active chips - such as the proposed Digital Angel of the future - will need to beam out information all the time. And that means designers will have to develop some sort of power source that can provide a continuous source of energy, yet be small enough to be embedded with the chips.

Another additional hurdle⁹, developing tiny GPS receiver chips that could be embedded yet still be sensitive enough to receive signals from thousands of miles out in space.

In addition to technical hurdles¹⁰, many suspect that all sorts of legal and privacy issues would have to be cleared as well.

Note:
Down the line: completely