In March 2005, a doctor client of mine, a cosmetic surgeon I traded services with, made a small incision in my left hand, pressed a 3 mm by 13 mm EM4102 glass transponder under the skin, and closed it up. The whole thing took about five minutes. I wasn't trying to make history; I just didn't want to carry keys around anymore. I wanted my front door, my car door, and my computer to know it was me.
The tag was too large for the injector kits used on pets, hence the scalpel. Skin glue, a bandage, entirely too much wrapping, and I was using the hand the next day.
I posted some crappy cell phone pictures of the procedure to Flickr, and on March 23 someone at Boing Boing caught wind of them. I'd been cross-linked on several blogs in less than 24 hours, so I threw together a FAQ to field the questions that would inevitably be asked. No, it can't track me: the read range is a couple of inches, tops. No, there is no implantable GPS. None. No, my personal information isn't on it; it's a read-only ten-digit ID that means nothing outside the systems I build myself. And no, it's not the mark of the beast: the chip isn't required, I don't need it to buy or sell things, and if it ever becomes an oppressive technology I can take it out. That particular genre of mail would keep arriving for the next two decades anyway.
Then came the hoax accusations. Some people online did not believe there was a chip in my hand, so a few days after the procedure I pointed my crappy Pentax digital camera at my hand and recorded a 24-second demonstration. I look a little cranky in it, because I was. Honestly though, I would never have recorded that moment without the doubters, so... thanks?
First test of the implant
The blog post I wrote that week ended with a line I still stand by: one small step for hand, one giant leap for keyless entry.