Chip – My Life Story

McMullan has a microchip implanted between his thumb and forefinger, and the vending machine immediately deducts money from his account. McMullan is the president of Three Square Market, a technology company that provides self-service mini-markets to hospitals, hotels, and company break rooms.

Last August, he became one of roughly 50 employees at its headquarters in River Falls, Wisconsin, who volunteered to have a chip injected into their hand. The idea came about in early , he says, when he was on a business trip to Sweden—a country where some people are getting subcutaneous microchips to do things like enter secure buildings or book train tickets. The chips he and his employees got are about the size of a very large grain of rice.

A year into their experiment, McMullan and a few employees say they are still using the chips regularly at work for all the activities they started out with last summer. As far as he knows, just two Three Square Market employees have had their chips removed—and that was when they left the company. Sam Bengtson, a software engineer, says he uses his chip 10 to 15 times a day.

Last August, 50 employees at Three Square Market got RFID chips in their hands. Now 80 have them.

At this point, swiping his hand over an RFID reader plugged into his computer is no different from typing in his password on a keyboard, he says. Steve Kassekert, vice president of finance, is so used to using his hand to pay for soda at work that he was annoyed when the RFID reader on the vending machine went down a couple of months ago.

The company is also exploring some ways to use microchips outside the body. McMullan says in August and September it is running tests at two hospitals—one in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and another in Hudson, Wisconsin—that will verify when doctors and nurses wash their hands. Nick Anderson, an associate professor in public health sciences at the University of California, Davis, says the privacy and security of any information stored on the chips is an obvious concern. McMullan says only some of the information stored on the chip in his hand is encrypted, but he argues that similar personal information could be stolen from his wallet, too.

Bengtson, at least, is concerned about this. Become an Insider to get the story behind the story — and before anyone else.

Small implants were first used in in Sweden and since then people have become active in microchipping. A tiny microchip inserted under the skin can replace the need to carry keys, credit cards and train tickets.

That might sound like an Orwellian nightmare to some but in Sweden it is a welcome reality for a growing number who favour convenience over concerns of potential personal data violations. The small implants were first used in in Sweden — initially confidentially — and several other countries. Swedes have gone on to be very active in microchipping, with scant debate about issues surrounding its use, in a country keen on new technology and where the sharing of personal information is held up as a sign of a transparent society.

Twenty-eight year-old Ulrika Celsing is one of 3, Swedes to have injected a microchip into her hand to try out a new way of life. To enter her workplace, the media agency Mindshare, she simply waves her hand on a small box and types in a code before the doors open.

World's lamest cyborg? My microchip isn't cool now – but it could be the future

In the past year, the chip has turned into a kind of electronic handbag and has even replaced her gym card, she said. How microchips inserted under the skin could unlock the future — and the door to your home. Although still small, they have the capacity to hold train tickets, entry pass codes as well as access certain vending machines and printers, promoters say.

Microchip implants give Jedi powers to lifelong Star Wars fan. She said she felt nothing but a slight sting when the syringe inserted the chip into her left hand, which she now uses on an almost daily basis and does not fear hacking or possible surveillance. But Jowan Osterlund, a piercings specialist and self-proclaimed champion of chip implantation, brushes off fears of data misuse and conspiracy theories.

He advocates the opposite view, arguing that if we carried all our personal data on us, we would have better control of their use. Erik Frisk, a Web developer and designer, uses his implanted chip to unlock his office door in Stockholm. Maddy Savage for NPR hide caption.

Many early adopters come from Stockholm's thriving startup scene. Erik Frisk, a year-old Web developer and designer, says he was really curious about the technology as soon as he heard about it and decided to get his own chip in So when you tap it against a reader, the chip sends back an ID that tells the reader which chip it is," he explains. When Frisk moved into a shared house earlier this year, he organized a chipping party for his new housemates. Now they can access the 16th century building they share in Stockholm's Old Town by tapping their hands on a digital reader by the door.

• .
• .
• ;
• This company embeds microchips in its employees, and they love it.
• Angels We Have Heard on High.
• How to Win in the Chess Openings: A Noted Champion Reveals the Secrets of Seizing and Holding the Initiative.

And she uses it to share her LinkedIn details at networking events, avoiding the need to spell out her name. She simply touches another attendee's smartphone and the information is transferred. Sweden's largest train company has started allowing commuters to use chips instead of tickets , and there's talk that the chips could soon be used to make payments in shops and restaurants. I think it's something that can seriously make people's lives better," Varszegi says.

Osterlund believes there are two key reasons microchips have taken off in Sweden. First, the country has a long history of embracing new technologies before many others and is quickly moving toward becoming a cashless society. In the s, the Swedish government invested in providing fast Internet services for its citizens and gave tax breaks to companies that provided their workers with home computers.

And well-known tech names such as Skype and Spotify have Swedish roots. Only 1 in 4 people living in Sweden uses cash at least once a week. And, according to the country's central bank, the Riksbank, the proportion of retail cash transactions has dropped from around 40 percent in to about 15 percent today.