Speaking a CeBIT, Professor August Wilhelm Scheer made the astonishing claim that one in four Germans would be happy to have an implanted RFID chip in their skin if it meant more convenience for them, particularly waiting times at the grocery store.
As well as foretelling the imminent demise of the CD and DVD, Professor Scheer said that implanting chips into humans was going to become commonplace. “The speed of the development is not going to be reduced this decade,” he told an audience of tech execs and politicians including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Some developments can already be seen. CDs and DVDs are going to disappear as material sources of information. Wallpaper will be replaced by flat screens and many of us will have chips implanted beneath our skin by the end of next decade.
Rather than being based on pure speculation, Scheer said that his organistion BITKOM had actually conducted research which had shown that a quarter of Germans would be happy to have a chip implanted if it meant they could access services more easily.
“We just carried out a survey and one out of four people are happy to have a chip planted under their skin for very trivial uses for example to pass gates more quickly at a discotheque for example and to be able to pay for things more quickly in the supermarket,” said Scheer. “The wilingness of the population to accept our technology is certainly given.”
The results of that survey are on their website [pdf] . If you look closer at Mr. Scheer’s statistics, 72% do not want an RFID implant.
Stats are hard to figure out, especially when it’s been reported that 1 in 7 Germans want the Berlin Wall back because the country was better off when it was split.
