RFIDs on the Brain (BoingBoing)

[Drew Wilson]

Here's Patrick Dixon, of Siemens, advertising as features all the things about RFID tags that I always thought should bother people the most. The first time I watched this, I figured it was The Yes Men having one over on the Ascent Business Leadership Forum.

I mean - it's all there: implanted RFIDs with human brain tissue growing naturally over them, total surveillance, predictive marketing... I suppose it's possible I'm still seeing this out of context - and that the speaker is actually pointing out how scary and strange this stuff gets. But I don't think so.

My favorite bit may be the reaction shot of one of the businessmen, who seems to be actually considering whether he is now fully and irrevocably engaged with the dark side of the force.

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When the speaker started talking about RFID tags on the brain, I had a total moment of thinking about the movie, "Final Cut"

Still, I cannot imagine implanting chips into the human body is all that healthy. After all, doctors have a hard enough time trying to get actual human tissue to not be rejected by the body. I can only imagine what would happen if a body rejected a microchip implanted directly onto the brain.

[1cooldude]

"Final Cut" is already here. I thought placing chips in our pets was cruel enough.

[mountain_rage]

Your body is much more likely to reject other biological matter, than specially designed textiles for the same purpose. That is why we have such inventions as the artificial heart, pace makers, leg pins, etc.

RFID is really not that scary, people are being over zealous in their fear mongering. It has a very short operating distance, this distance is not likely to increase unless we create reliable, high capacity, and cheap batteries. Finally, unless people are stupid, they will not get an RFID tag implanted into their body. Any chip residing in creditcards, passports, etc can be thwarted with the proper sleaving. The only real danger of RFID is if they start secretly imbeding the chips in clothing, as well as underhandedly monitor it through your appliances. But to be frank, most of what they will be monitoring is already monitored when you use your credit cards, google, and member cards.

Now from what I can ascertain from the blip on implanting them in the brain, it just sounds like he is expressing possible medical uses of RFID in the future, not that they currently have any. My guess is that it might be possible to have your brain interpret the positioning of a bionic arm using and RFID tag and readers that are tied into the brain. What people need to realize is that RFID has a lot of potential far beyond just monitoring goods, it just so happens that its greatest power is in logistics so thats how everyone has associated it.