Also available: The Constant Companion^TM lets you keep a watchful eye on grandma or grandpa, even when you can't be by their side; The Invisible Bodyguard^TM offers freedom from fear so you can enjoy the fauna and foliage when eco-tourism takes you to kidnapping hot spots around the globe. Coming soon: The INS Border Patroller^TM; the Maximum Security Guard^TM; the Personal Private Eye^TM; the Micro-Manager^TM.

Alas, this is not as far-fetched or as futuristic as it sounds. The whoa-dude notion of surveillance chips being installed in human beings is poised to cross over from the realm of science fiction into everyday reality, and soon. One technology with the deliciously sci-fi name of the "Digital Angel," a prototype of which will be unveiled next month, could be implanted under the skin and used to monitor not only the chip-wearer's location, but vital signs like heart rate and body temperature. Other devices, worn externally like bracelets or pagers, are already in use and invite us to embrace electronic monitoring in specific environments -- like a theme park, college campus or construction site -- for our fun, health or safety.

What's disturbing is just how quickly these devices, which only recently would have been laughed off as a cyborg fantasy, are becoming accepted. Amazingly, it was but two years ago that a British cybernetics professor pulled what then seemed like a futuristic stunt; temporarily installing electronics in his arm to control his computer remotely.

Now having a personal chip is becoming, well, not quite the norm but a ready possibility. Kevin Warwick, the cybernetics prof, says, "As the topic becomes more accessible in the media, people get used to the idea; it's not such a frightening thing ... If it's not there this year, it's only a year or two downstream." A Japanese firm is already testing chips to track lost relatives. And the New York Times, in a nod to what its editors imagine the future might hold now that the human genome project is complete, asked several designers to suggest how we might carry around a chip encoded with our unique genetic sequence "for perfect identification in matters medical, official, criminal or otherwise." Some of the possibilities portrayed in the July 9 Sunday magazine: a "decoder" ring, an implant in the human iris to be read with a retinal scanner, even an oval-shaped "genegg" for the belly button.

With commercial interests hard at work to spread the gospel of human tracking and monitoring -- voluntarily, and for our own good, of course, and others normalizing chip implantation, it might not be too soon to start preparing for a whole new silicon craze. Excuse me, but is that a chip in your ass?

The Free Software Project
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