By Tim Ferguson, 10 October 2006 16:20
NEWS
Most people still think paying for their shopping with a chip embedded under their skin is a step too far.
According to Institute of Grocery Distribution research only one in 10 teenagers would be interested, while one in 20 adults would also be open to the idea.
There was significantly greater interest in other biometric payment methods - such as iris recognition and fingerprinting - with 20 per cent of teenagers and 17 per cent of adults saying they would like to use these.
But Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading said the idea of chips embedded under the skin still has "enormous potential".
He said one of the main benefits would be security as there would be little possibility of losing your method of payment - unlike with credit cards.
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Warwick said he could see the tech taking off in the retail environment if shops offered discounts to people, much like loyalty cards, or if embedded microchips became a fashion item.
But in contrast, Simon Davies, director of civil liberties group Privacy International, said: "The idea of a chip in the skin to purchase goods is laughable."
Davies said the technology would be a "hostile intrusion into human autonomy".
He also pointed out that reading devices for these kinds of chips are "notoriously prone to failure" and that - with the risk of having a chip implanted - people would find this unacceptable.
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
But we've been chipping our dogs, cats, rabbits, etc for years....
... what advice has that industry to offer, and what can we learn?
I'm all for it, if it works.
2. ruth mccullough
Didn't someone do a demonstration recently about how easily this information could be read by fraudsters & copied? My dog's chip is connected to a database where she's identified as a JRT-X aged 10 living at such & such an address. As she has a bad (non-existant) credit rating I don't suppose anyone would be interested in cloning her chip but the same can't be said for humans. Forget it! This isn't being done for the benefit of the buyer.
3. D Fletcher
I'm repeating myself here - but I'll say it again any way.
If an implanted chip did away with all those stupid plastic credit cards, driving licences, passports, ID cards - which it quite easily could - I'd be first in the queue to get one.
4. anonymous
So all those people wandering the streets with knives have a sure-fire way of increasing their 'take-home pay'!