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 immediate
help. Once paramedics arrive, the chip will also be able to tell the
rescue workers which drugs little Johnny or Janie is allergic 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 embedded 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 embedding microchips isn't entirely 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 wirelessly track his whereabouts with the
university's building.

But Applied 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
detailed 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 hurdle, 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 hurdles, many suspect that all sorts of
legal and privacy issues would have to be cleared as well.

Note:

Down the line: completely