Are Chip Implants in Our Future?

We have long quipped that every private school parent cohort contains two large and opposing groups in terms of their attitudes toward technology in the classroom. On the one hand are the "chip implant advocates", who year for the day when every child comes standard with a Thunderbolt port in their head for downloading data. And on the other hand are the members of the "quill and slate society", who value longhand writing, long division (also by hand), and eschew color televisions. Frankly, in some of our focus group sessions, the above are only slight exaggerations.So, this item about a Swedish tech company actively using chip implants naturally caught our attention.

"What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand. The injections have become so popular that workers at Epicenter hold parties for those willing to get implanted."

How long before some parents begin asking whether your school is able to implant a chip pre-loaded with, say, the works of Shakespeare? The implications are tremendous. And terrifying beyond words.