from McClatchy

Dawn of the bionic age: Body hackers let chips get under their skin

BY TIM JOHNSON

Doug Copeland, left, prepares to implant a microchip in the hand of Kyle Spiers at a workshop at the DefCon 2017 convention in Las Vegas July 28, 2017. Hackers who implant microchips are known as “grinders,” a term taken from a comic book. Tim Johnson McClatchy

If you’re prone to forgetting your card key for the office or your computer password, here’s a solution: Get a microchip implanted in your hand.

That’s what Brian McEvoy has done multiple times. He’s got five implants, mostly for functional reasons but one just for fun.

“There’s a glow-in-the-dark implant on the back of my right hand,” said McEvoy, a 36-year-old electrical engineer from St. Paul, Minnesota.

For years, owners have implanted microchips in their pets to recover them if they go astray. Farmers use them in cattle. Now, humans are experimenting with subdermal microchips, which are the size of a large grain of rice, to make modern life easier.

Ever so slowly, a trend that began in the hacker community is moving toward the mainstream. A Wisconsin firm that specializes in designing company break rooms, Three Square Market, announced last month that it was offering implanted chips to all its employees.

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