Chip ahoy! No more lost keys and cards
Two men are testing the varied uses of implanted microchips
EARLY one morning in 2012, engineer Daniel de Kock was locked out of his office building in Johannesburg because he did not have his access card.
That’s when he decided it was time for him and his friend Jarryd Bekker to make their idea of implanting access microchips into their bodies a reality.
Now these tech wizards simply swipe their hands across a sensor to get into The Diz building, near the University of the Witwatersrand. The access codes under their skin are in chips roughly the size of a grain of rice.
Like James Bond in Spectre, or your pets, they are chipped.
The two are experimenting on themselves with the next tech sensation: wearable tech under the skin, known as “wetware”.
The chips are encased in a tiny piece of glass as hard as bone. De Kock has one in the web at the base of his thumb, while Bekker has two there and one in his wrist.
The first chip Bekker put into the base of his thumb in 2013 had the potential to unlock and start a car without a key, but no motor manufacturer would grant them access to the codes to programme car keys.
Bekker holds his wrist next to my Android phone, which lights up in an instant with details of his business card. The sensor in his chip has commanded the phone to open the webpage of their company Bushveld Labs.
He says: “When I put in the first chip I just wanted to see what it felt like. I was prepared to take it in and out in that same sitting. We wanted to show that the limits we think are there, are not really there. It is not uncomfortable TINY TECH: Jarryd Bekker shows the size of the microchips he and De Kock have inserted into their hands or scary. We couldn’t get needles from doctors or vets, only piercing artists, for this. I had needles, I had implants and some wine and was ready to go. It was not painful, more like a tingle.”
There are no nerves, arteries, veins or big joints in the web at the base of the thumb, so the chance of the chip interfering with the hand or migrating are almost zero, says De Kock.
“It’s not uncomfortable and I hardly notice it is there.”
To their knowledge only one other guy in South Africa has a microchip, the CEO of LifeQ, Riaan Conradie. “He flew us down to give a presentation. After it we whipped out the needles and gave him one.”
The demand is growing but the pair discourage this unless the implant has a purpose — in their case experimentation.
Bekker says: “A lot of people are nagging us to get an implant, and so many parents are asking us to implant their kids to track them. The first question we get is whether the chip can get infected. The next one is if it can it be crushed, then does it hurt and then, can I implant my kid?”
De Kock adds: “A lot of this tech is controversial, but people are happy with pacemakers and hip implants and cornea replacements and this is just something else to put in the body — it’s just an upgrade to the body. It makes your life easier and more fun.”
Bekker has multiple chips to allow the two to test multiple technologies and see what devices can read what through the skin. His basic chip for keyless access has unique identification codes and personal medical information (things such as medical aid, blood type, allergies).
The more advanced chips can send commands to a smartphone, to open a website or do a bank transaction.
One of Bekker’s chips can function like a “tap and go” bank card, authenticating the information needed to process small transactions.
However, he needs permission from his bank to link his bank card to his chip.
They are confident this system is no more at risk of theft than carrying a wallet.
Bekker says: “A lot of people say: ‘You’ve got your keys in your arm and your wallet in your arm. I’ll just cut off your arm and I can do all your stuff.’ But even if you steal it, you won’t be able to use what’s in it: you still need a pin code.
“Just because it’s inside me doesn’t mean it is less secure. It just means I have to carry around a lot less in my pocket.”
They expect that in the future such chips could have medical uses such as monitoring blood sugar or sounding an alert if a heart attack is imminent. The chips are safe for MRIs and don’t show up on metal detectors or even X-ray machines.
Under South African law they are allowed to test the implantation of chips, unlike in the US where some people have implants but it is strictly controlled. Under US regulations, any implant, even a hip implant, must be by request and not suggested to the patient. This followed a court case involving workers who got access chips that had to be removed when the company shut down.
But in Sweden, workers in a hi-tech office block took up the chance last year to get chips instead of swipe cards to access doors and photocopy machines.
For Becker and De Kock, there are no limits to their experiments and they may end up cyborgs as they figure out sci-fi ways to streamline tasks and improve health and security.