offering to implant its employees and start-up members with microchips that function as swipe cards, allowing them to open doors, operate equipment or buy food and drinks with a wave of the hand.
microchips have been available for decades, the technology has never
been implanted in humans on such a broad scale.
"Epicenter and a handful
of other companies are the first to make chip implants broadly
available," reports Associated Press.
From the report:
most new technologies, it raises security and privacy issues.
the chips are biologically safe, the data they generate can show how
often employees come to work or what they buy.
Epicenter, which is home to
more than 100 companies and roughly 2,000 workers, began implanting
workers in January 2015.
Now, about 150 workers have the chips. A
company based in Belgium also offers its employees such implants, and
there are isolated cases around the world in which tech enthusiasts have
tried them out in recent years.
The small implants use near-field
communication technology, or NFC, the same as in contactless credit
cards or mobile payments.
When activated by a reader a few inches away, a
small amount of data flows between the two devices via electromagnetic
The implants are "passive," meaning they contain information that
other devices can read, but cannot read information themselves.
Libberton, a microbiologist at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, says
hackers could conceivably gain huge swaths of information from embedded
The ethical dilemmas will become bigger the more
sophisticated the microchips become. Epicenter workers stage monthly
events where attendees can receive the implant.
Sweden first cashless society.