Technology and man merging, its a conversation that has gone on as far back as The Million Dollar Man. But one man by the name of Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow (Seriously thats actually his real name) has decided to try merging man with machine for real. He is a Bio-hacker from down under and he has installed the Aussie equivalent of the Leap card into his hand.
He did this by cutting out the NFC chip from the card and encased in bio-compatible plastic, measuring 10 millimetres by 6 millimetres. After that he implanted the small device beneath his skin on his left hand. So now he can hop on and off public transport without ever having to fumble around for his card. Imagine that, no searching for your Leap card while you see the carts pull up to your stop. Cue panic- but no more if you fancy it.
By the way he actually has three of these chips installed, the other two are fully re-programmable so he can do things like open his car, connect to his phone and basically any of the uses of NFC that you can think of.
“It gives me an ability that not everyone else has, so if someone stole my wallet I could still get home,” he said.
Like everybody else he tops up his card via his smartphone, there is only one slight drawback. His hand needs to be about 1cm from the card scanner about three times closer than your card needs to be. Darn skin getting in the way of progress. Oh and he sometimes needs to tap more than once, due to his device’s smaller antenna. But still pretty cool.
For experts only
This isn’t something we would recommend, Mr Meow as we will now call him had to have his chip installed by a piercing expert. The procedure lasted about 1 hour. His other two procedures involved minor surgery which you know just seems a bit extreme for getting on a tram.
According to Mr Meow he claims that the procedure carries risks of bacterial infection so it needs to be done by professionals. So Martin put the butter knife down and step away from the counter. The best part of all this is the how the authorities have taken this. Not good by the way, his actions were a breach of Opal’s terms of service, which prohibit tampering. Right now he is the most wanted passenger who pays his fares.
What comes next
Mr Meow actually pretty much thinks that this kind of technology could be the future. His opinion is that implants like this could become as common as pacemakers for heart problems, the bar for birth control or even the gastric band. He has been as bold as to claim that approximately 40 people want to get the Opal card installed once the confusion with the authorities clears up.
“Putting technology into the body is not unusual,”
This technology could be brilliant going forward even if just for medical reasons alone. Medical information could be stored on an NFC chip for better patient treatment. But for now Mr Meow can get on a tram. That’s good enough for now.
Would you get an NFC chip installed??
