Cyborgs at work: employees getting implanted with
microchips
James Brooks, Associated Press Updated 9:08 am, Monday,
April 3, 2017
STOCKHOLM (AP) — The syringe slides in between the thumb
and index finger. Then, with a click, a microchip is injected in the employee's
hand. Another "cyborg" is created.
What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace
is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to
implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of
rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy
smoothies with a wave of the hand.
"The biggest benefit I think is convenience,"
said Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and CEO of Epicenter. As a demonstration, he
unlocks a door by merely waving near it. "It basically replaces a lot of
things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or
keys."
The technology in itself is not new. Such chips are used
as virtual collar plates for pets. Companies use them to track deliveries. It's
just never been used to tag employees on a broad scale before. Epicenter and a
handful of other companies are the first to make chip implants broadly
available.
And as with most new technologies, it raises security and
privacy issues. While biologically safe, the data generated by the chips can
show how often an employee comes to work or what they buy. Unlike company swipe
cards or smartphones, which can generate the same data, a person cannot easily
separate themselves from the chip.
"Of course, putting things into your body is quite a
big step to do and it was even for me at first," said Mesterton,
remembering how he initially had had doubts.
"But then on the other hand, I mean, people have
been implanting things into their body, like pacemakers and stuff to control
your heart," he said. "That's a way, way more serious thing than
having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices."
Epicenter, which is home to more than 100 companies and
some 2,000 workers, began implanting workers in January 2015. Now, about 150
workers have them. A company based in Belgium also offers its employees such
implants, and there are isolated cases around the world where tech enthusiasts
have tried this out in recent years.
The small implants use Near Field Communication (NFC)
technology, the same as in contactless credit cards or mobile payments. When
activated by a reader a few centimeters (inches) away, a small amount of data
flows between the two devices via electromagnetic waves. The implants are
"passive," meaning they contain information that other devices can read,
but cannot read information themselves.
Ben Libberton, a microbiologist at Stockholm's Karolinska
Institute, says hackers could conceivably gain huge swathes of information from
embedded microchips. The ethical dilemmas will become bigger the more sophisticated
the microchips become.
"The data that you could possibly get from a chip
that is embedded in your body is a lot different from the data that you can get
from a smartphone," he says. "Conceptually you could get data about
your health, you could get data about your whereabouts, how often you're
working, how long you're working, if you're taking toilet breaks and things
like that."
Libberton said that if such data is collected, the big
question remains of what happens to it, who uses it, and for what purpose.
So far, Epicenter's group of cyborgs doesn't seem too
concerned.
"People ask me; 'Are you chipped?' and I say; 'Yes,
why not,'" said Fredric Kaijser, the 47-year-old chief experience officer
at Epicenter. "And they all get excited about privacy issues and what that
means and so forth. And for me it's just a matter of I like to try new things
and just see it as more of an enabler and what that would bring into the
future."
The implants have become so popular that Epicenter
workers stage monthly events where attendees have the option of being
"chipped" for free.
That means visits from self-described "body
hacker" Jowan Osterlund from Biohax Sweden who performs the
"operation."
He injects the implants — using pre-loaded syringes —
into the fleshy area of the hand, just next to the thumb. The process lasts a
few seconds, and more often than not there are no screams and barely a drop of
blood. "The next step for electronics is to move into the body," he
says.
Sandra Haglof, 25, who works for Eventomatic, an events
company that works with Epicenter, has had three piercings before, and her left
hand barely shakes as Osterlund injects the small chip.
"I want to be part of the future," she laughs.
Matti Huuhtanen in Helsinki contributed to this report.
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