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FORTUNE.COM// JA N.1 .1989
FORTUNE.COM// JA N.1 .19implanted about 150 microchips into people
around Britain, the British business organiza-
tion BCI said, “It makes for distinctly uncom-
fortable reading.” The country’s Trades Union
Congress warned that biochips “would give
bosses even more power and control over their
workers.” Recent problems suggest the need
for careful oversight: A report by the Interna-
tional Consortium for Investigative Journalists
revealed that medical patients in numerous
countries had been injured by “poorly tested
implants” (not all of them biochips) because of
a lack of regulations for new devices.
And yet individuals enchanted by the tech-
nology are driving its early adoption. Among
those who arrive at Barbarella wanting a
Biohax chip is Annie Kjellson, 29, a struc-
tural engineer, who wheels her 18-month-old
son through the door in his stroller and sits
down to receive her injection. “I have been
thinking about this for years,” she says.D
ESPITE THE UNCOMFORTABLE SCI-FI
oddity it represents, there is an
inevitability around biochipping,
if for no other reason than the
sheer convenience it promises. The wallet in
my purse slung over my shoulder is jammed
with pieces of plastic, declaring me a gym
member, a journalist, and a customer of two
banks and a credit card company, all of whose
passwords I occasionally forget. There are
also cards giving details of my health insur-
ance, which airlines I fly on, where I shop for
groceries, and where I get my hair cut. Then
there is my bunch of keys—primitive tools
that have opened doors, chests, and lockers for
thousands of years, and to which we somehow
remain closely attached. The morning after I
return from Sweden, I lock myself out of my
apartment while racing to go play tennis. That
requires a complicated handoff, by way of a
taxi from five miles away, where another set
of keys sits idling in my husband’s pocket.
For biohackers, these antiquated habits are
senseless. “I used to lose my keys all the time.
Now I unlock the door to my house with my
hand,” says Aric Dromi, an Israeli-Swedish
futurologist who has a Biohax chip implantedcards. “Tech will move into the body,” he says.
“I am sure of that.”
First, Österlund and other “chippers” will
have to overcome understandable doubters,
from privacy advocates to medical ethicists.
Though the chips are inert and, therefore, the-
oretically harmless, for many people the very
idea of having a permanent connectable device
inside them evokes notions of losing control
over the one sphere where they can still truly
be themselves: their bodies. Invariably, even
minor reports of companies using biochips ig-
nite outrage. When BioTeq Ltd., a biochip com-
pany in England, said in November that it had
Jowan Österlund, the heavily tattooed founder of
Biohax International, thinks one day it will be
commonplace to inject chips into people’s bodies.
“This is what is going to happen,” he says.“YOU ARE
CREATING
AN
ENTIRELY
NEW
TYPE OF
BEHAVIOR
AND
ENTIRELY
NEWT YPES
OF DATA.”