When the Swedish Epicenter (“incubator / greenhouse” for more than 100 startups in Stockholm) began planting passive microchips (RFID: Radio Frequency IDentification) in its employees at the beginning of 2017, voluntarily of course (a rather coercive voluntarism; but this is a matter requiring its own analysis…), it was and wasn’t pioneering. It was pioneering in the sense that this was the first publicly known mass implantation of microchips in humans in relation to their workplace/time.
It wasn’t pioneering, on the other hand, because biohackers, both as individuals and as a “movement,” have been around for quite some time. The biohacking phenomenon, a trend of the early 21st century, has paved the way; and biohackers have put forward arguments in favor of implanting circuits in the body (of people). (More in DIYbio: self-enhancement in the 21st century, in this issue).
Consequently, some of the statements made by the “electronically vaccinated” of Epicenter (the specific RFID is implanted subcutaneously using a syringe…) are simply an echo of the celebratory tones of various earlier biohackers:
– For me, the issue is that I want to learn new things and become an example for others as well, declares, for instance, 47-year-old Fredric Kaijser, a company executive.
– I want to be part of the future, says 25-year-old Sandra Haglof, laughing, an employee at one of Epicenter’s startups.
It is, indeed, voluntary, this “chipping.” For the company’s co-founder Patrick Mesterton, it is also convenient: you can do a lot of things without using other communication devices, he says. And he can prove it: this was, after all, Epicenter’s main argument when it proposed to / invited its employees to implant the microchip.
No doubt employers of this sort will multiply quickly. The American Three Square Market has already proposed it, and its employees accepted it enthusiastically…
First, a brief guide for those who don’t know what we’re talking about. Microcircuits of this type have been known and in use for years. They exist in various forms of cards (of the e-pass type, for example), on a page of the passports of several countries, on driver’s licenses (and in Greece now), on product labels, on bank cards, and even on pets. Either on their collars or implanted; pets should have been the first animal species to be “chipped” en masse, especially since from the early 21st century various countries’ legislations made it mandatory.
RFID chips are “passive circuits.” They don’t function on their own, and therefore don’t require an energy source. They react when exposed to a radio signal, to a specific type of radiation. Then they “transmit” their data. In the simplest versions, the only data is a number; which serves as an identity. Once the device/machine that emitted the radiation receives this number, it proceeds further: it’s connected to a database, so the “recognition” works as an activation of the specific “file.” If, for example, it’s an electronic door lock of a house, office, or car, it opens: sesame open. If it’s a vending machine, it works (charging the chipped customer’s personal account simultaneously). If it’s a personal computer, it unlocks and starts operating. It holds that even if this number/code emitted by an RFID is stolen, it’s useless unless the thief also has the database it corresponds to and with which it “communicates.”
This is the simplest version of the matter. And most likely the one the “pioneering” employees of various companies are proud of. It’s not the only one. There are two sides to the “development” of implantable circuits. First, their “capacity” for information. And second, whether their operation requires energy, and what that might be within the human body. The American army (and we assume not only that one) is researching RFID circuits that would somehow be energized by the host body itself. The initial prospect is for them to function as autonomous “sensors” of the body’s condition (of the soldier): to collect data on heartbeats, blood pressure, breathing rate, and similar metrics. These (the goal is) to be able to transmit as information over some distance (perhaps to the “squad station”) and beyond… So that the biological condition of the army can be monitored, person by person…
We already live among RFID chips. But their presence alone constitutes only a small part of the argument in favor of the physiological nature (“pioneering” for now…) of their implantation. The reason is obvious: this isn’t about the world in general; it’s about the human body.
Is something changing?
The rhetoric of normality has a small but impressive repertoire of “foreign body” implants, technical/mechanical in one sense or another. Implants that don’t impress anyone. From dental implants to pacemakers; from micro-pumps implanted in those who undergo regular dialysis to… piercings. The latter is decorative, and is mentioned for the dimension of “entertainment,” of fun, that piercing has. The rest, however, are corrective interventions, therapeutic interventions; and not “capability enhancements” like piercing. Therefore, as examples, they are demagogic.
There are other generalized social customs and traditions that have prepared the normality of piercing…
nomophobia and others
How normal was it, really, just a generation ago, not to be able to live far from your phone? The question will seem absurd in a few years; however, there is still a brief window of time for one to remember that there were decades when the (wired) telephone was NOT among the devices/machines one simply couldn’t do without in everyday life. There was, perhaps, another portable device/machine with which a unique personal relationship historically developed: the wristwatch. Yet the dependence on mobile phones is something qualitatively and quantitatively new. It was established and generalized within just one generation, and it gives rise to phenomena that perhaps have never before appeared in modern societies, to such an extent and with such intensity.
Experts (who else? psychologists!) have already adopted a name for this addiction: nomophobia. From no – mo(bil) – phobia. It refers to the feelings of distress to outright panic experienced by mobile phone owners/users if the device stops working, or they lose it, or forget it. It is a new source of intense anxiety.
Related statistical studies reveal situations that might make you laugh or doubt their validity—if you don’t secretly belong to such cases. In various modern societies, 1 in 10 people (among those aged 18 to 34, 1 in 5) admit to using their mobile phone even while having sex… Slightly more than 1 in 10 take their mobile into the bathroom/restroom and use it there. One in three uses it at the cinema or theatre. Needless to say, almost everyone uses it in social gatherings and in any “natural” social interactions. After all this, if the device is lost, despair emerges—not due to the cost of buying a new one. If it runs out of battery or signal, most people also begin to feel a sense of “pressure.”
The fact that the mobile phone has become the remote control of daily life is a cliché. The fact that this remote control is about to be enriched with even more “capabilities” has been announced; and in reality it is already happening. With the final form of this relationship unknown, which became massively addictive from its first steps.
What do supporters of implanting RFID chips now answer to the argument that this (the implantation) is not necessary since so far the same job (opening smart doors, smart taps or getting a soft drink from a smart machine) was done with RFID cards? That these (the cards) could be lost or stolen!… Their integration “protects” them (and thus their users) from “loss” – hence from a set of “malfunctions”.
This is exactly what causes anxiety or panic in owners/users of remote controls, which until now exist as external devices of the body, but in direct correlation with it! Theft, loss, malfunction: the relationship with this machine has already become so intensive and daily (intended to become much more so) that the demand for its integration, partially or even totally, has already been formed, even if it is not explicitly stated. Perhaps some kind of screen will remain as an external accessory.
But: when the mobile phone has the “application” that will replace the house and car keys, what will “I lost it” or “it ran out of battery” mean? Wouldn’t an advanced subcutaneous microcircuit be preferable, both for this and for other applications?
The intermediate between external electronic devices/remotes of daily life and embedded circuits already exists. Wearables.1 There is a growing collection of such consumer micro-devices that can be “worn” in every conceivable and inconceivable way. And they “offer” services that no one had conceived as missing before they appeared on the market: from counting the steps of your walk (so you can get proper exercise) to reminding you to drink water (so you don’t die from dehydration, which happened abundantly for so many decades now, before the invention of this life-saving application…)
For a fashion (or for yet another addiction process) that has only been around for 2.5 years in the market, the fact that every month in 2017, so far, 8 to 10 million wearables are sold (worldwide, but mainly in the North) is remarkable. Even more remarkable is that this process of wearable digitization of everyday life, beyond the portable kind of smartphones, promises so much (as usable data) that major US insurers are orienting themselves toward “giving away” (or selling very cheaply) the rather expensive Apple Watches to their customers; naturally with the appropriate software for recording and monitoring their health. The American insurer Aetna is negotiating a very low purchase price with Apple, having as bait its 23 million customers. Vitality, another major player in the field, is already offering 30% – 40% discounts to its customers on various wearables related to health measurements and physical condition. Samsung, on the other hand, offers its own half-price wearable to buyers of its smartphones.
On the other hand, in public systems, the English NHS already offers various types of wearables for free on a trial basis, within a program that records the benefit (including financial) of early diagnosis through these electronic sensors and the algorithms that process various data. According to system officials, patients remaining at home while maintaining continuous online communication with their doctors, based on data collected by their wearables, saves time, effort (for patients), and money (for the healthcare system). Additionally, for minor exceedances of limits in this or that indicator, patients will be able to receive instructions electronically. The integration of medical monitors goes hand in hand with remote healthcare…
Wearables are a new treasure because their “contact with the body” easily suggests and convinces even more easily how necessary they are for individual (primarily…) health monitoring, wellness, fitness; basic anxious interests of modern subjects. All kinds of companies related (or not) to “health” have lit fireworks celebrating: such voluntary data broadcasts, on a daily and 24-hour basis, could not have been dreamed of even ten years ago! This is a basic reason why they are considering the free provision of relevant wearables: faced with the benefits they will have from the permanent recording of this data, from one subject to another, what does the cost of such a “gift” matter?
However, every paradise has some shadow. For this process of continuous electronic self-surveillance (and not only “this”) to pay off, customers need to show an obsession and discipline that are not always guaranteed in fashion trends. They must, that is, not get bored. And to wear wearables constantly, in sleep or awake, at work or on a walk, in sex or in drug use. Perhaps the not-so-distant future of wearables is implantation, at least initially in part, so that data recipients can be assured of the smoothness and permanence of the relevant flows?
This probably must happen! In any case, the “contact” of wearables with the skin/body and the belief that electronic recording/datafication is (becomes….) necessary for Self-care and Health is already a precious dowry.2 Let’s say it’s a voluntary and enthusiastic process of familiarization. The distance between outside the skin and inside the skin may seem great from the perspective of usual habits and customs; but it is easy to prove that it is practically minimal. Tenths of a millimeter. Assurances are certainly needed regarding the painless nature of implantation and hygienic safety against the implanted chip.
Biohackers and chipped employees can provide both. Already.
motherboard
The ideological, economic, and “psychosocial” prerequisites for the implantation of microchips are, therefore, already here. On a very large scale. There is only one and a half obstacles that need to be overcome.
The half obstacle concerns the average social anxiety about the side effects that the implantation of a “foreign body” of the kind of an electrical circuit could have. Although it may have the form of a microscopic pill, it is not about that. Fears, for example, that a sudden movement or a simple blow could break this little circuit that is located under the skin, should be considered valid. Against such reasonable fears, systematic “advertising” campaigns, reassurance about the fragility of the thing, and the transformation of microchip implantation into a hype of broader appeal will be necessary.
The full obstacle concerns something else. The dominant idea about the human body, under the possible lights of the new technosciences and their ideologies, is that of its unwrapping not around electronic components. But around dna. Biotechnologies have already conquered the social imaginary for “what is a human being,” and the management of genes, with goal A or goal B, is something “ripe” as a social demand. Very recent technical inventions such as crisp are ready to spill into the market (as soon as the experts are sure enough so that companies can sell, to fool around; that is, both together): the self-perception of the body in 21st century capitalism has already been delivered to microassembly; however, of the “structural bases,” and not of silicon molecules. How will microchip implantation overcome this obstacle?
There is, perhaps, a “synthesis”: microchips made from DNA segments (and carbon nanotubes). The relevant research is not entirely new, and encouraging results are announced from time to time. A possible “synthesis” would therefore be a new generation of microchips that would “persuade” that they are organic enough from a construction point of view so as not to be simply the miniaturization of the smart phone…
Perhaps the obstacle will prove to be smaller if the tip of its (spread of) implantation is timely diagnosis. In this area, just-in-time measurements (and the corresponding data) have a strategic advantage over genetic diagnoses. The latter are usually probabilistic, certainly regarding the timing of the manifestation of this or that “problem.” In contrast, real-time recordings may reveal malfunctions also in real time. Such or very close is the average social belief in prevention/diagnosis through biochemical tests, the most common and mass practice of laboratory medicine for decades.
We can now assume an argument that would easily reinforce the implantation of “persistent check-up” circuits, voluntarily, into human bodies: the relief from the uncertainty of hygienic practices which, on one hand, fail to achieve their goals and, on the other, become manifestations of hypochondria. Just as human communication has been invested with the demand for intensive immediacy, making mobile phones a basic accessory of the “social self” and, therefore, a necessary complement not only to (mediated) “sociability” but also to the human body, in exactly the same way the pursuit of health, in all its manifestations—performance, endurance, youth, etc.—can be invested with intensive immediacy. If, moreover, the subcutaneous collectors of health data are networked with central algorithms (e.g., the personal doctor’s server), then we can reasonably predict that the “demand for security,” in its hygienic version, will acquire new forms and dimensions.
Morphologically speaking, the idea of the body as a phenotypic manifestation of the supposed properties of nitrogenous base sequences appears to differ significantly from the idea of the body as a motherboard. However, the parallel development of these two imaginaries is not coincidental. Beyond the capitalist evolution of the techno-scientific/engineering paradigm shift, what unites these two different forms is their social/relational background. The symbolic, condensed expression of this unity at the base of contemporary social mores could be rendered in the phrase: “IF IT’S TO …… THEN OF COURSE YES!!!”
In the blank, you can fill in whatever you like: the one-dimensional utilitarian affirmation of mechanical ideas/proposals/applications as a “need” that nobody had realized until the technological miracle appeared before them. This emanation of individually and socially embedded neoliberalism in the 21st century has already shone. In the galaxy of wearables. In the parade of the wearable.
And what today has become so acceptable proves afterward to be the precondition of what will become acceptable tomorrow.
Ziggy Stardust
cyborg #10 – 10/2017
