Pray for wisdom regarding all future development of technologies that foster personal identification of individuals that could lead to buying and selling via a number system. We have been warned.

“This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.” (Revelations 13:18)

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The microchip is about the size of a grain of rice and usually inserted in the webbing between the thumb and forefinger using a needle the same thickness as used in body piercing.

It feels, says insertable technology expert Kayla Heffernan, like getting a drip.

Once the needle is removed the incision heals in a few days and the microchip remains, allowing the wearer to open doors with the brush of a hand – provided they only wish to access one particular place.

Commercially available insertable microchips are only large enough to hold one access code and a small amount of other information, so the days of replacing an entire wallet and keychain with a tiny computer under the skin are not yet upon us.

The future is coming, but it’s not in a rush.

Ten volunteers received a microchip at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne on Wednesday to mark the launch of Pause Fest, a technology and culture festival now in its eighth year.

Their chips were preloaded with a three-day pass to the festival and will be programmed to unlock the door to their home, gym, or workplace, or potentially to function as their public transport pass.

When the festival is held in four months time, the volunteers will take part in a panel with Heffernan to talk about whether they found the chips useful.

Heffernan has had one microchip between her thumb and forefinger for almost 18 months, which she uses to unlock her front door. She got another on the outer edge of her other hand last November to access her office at Melbourne University…. (Excerpt from Calla Wahlquist article in The Guardian, “Under the skin: how insertable microchips could unlock the future”)