Are you ready to have your veins scanned every time you use your bank account? Are you ready to use a “digital tattoo” or a microchip implant to unlock your telephone? Once upon a time we read about such technologies in science fiction novels, but now they are here. The era of widespread biometric identification and microchip implants is upon us, and it is going to change the way that we live.

Proponents of these new technologies say that they will make our private information and our bank accounts much more secure. But there are others that warn that these kinds of “Big Brother technologies” will set the stage for even more government intrusion into our lives. In the wrong hands, such technologies could prove to be an absolute nightmare.

Barclays has just announced that it is going to become the first major bank in the western world to use vein scanning technology to control access to bank accounts. There will even be a biometric reader that customers plug into their computers at home.

It is only a matter of time before more banks, online retailers and major websites start using this kind of technology. We live at a time when theft on the Internet threatens to spiral out of control, and big corporations are going to be continually looking for answers. Motorola has developed a digital tattoo that will be used to ensure that only the owner of a phone is able to unlock it.

As it is starting to become more mainstream, and there are already some thinkers that are quite eager to use such technology for very authoritarian purposes.For example, one prominent philosopher recently suggested that we should use implantable microchips to prevent anyone that is “deemed unworthy” from becoming a parent.You might be tempted to think that this is crazy talk.But the truth is that this kind of technology is already being developed.In fact Bill Gates is funding the development of a birth control microchip that “acts as a contraceptive for 16 years.

The reality of the matter is that technology is changing at an exponential rate, and our world is going to get crazier and crazier as time goes by.Are you ready for what comes next?

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