Google was celebrating the 57th anniversary on the patent of the barcode today so I thought I'd join in. I saw a link to a barcode generator and made my own 'ScrapGoddess' barcode above.My Dad has always said that one day we will all have barcodes tattooed on our hands and we won't need driver's licenses or credit cards or anything like that because all anyone will need to do to find out about us will be to scan our barcode. I don't think that is so far-fetched. I mean I don't think it will be a an actual tattoo .. probably a sub-cutaneous embedded computer chip. They embed computer chips in dogs and cats ... I'm sure the technology exists right now to do it to humans.
I mean really ... everyone has a ton of little pieces of plastic with what are functionally barcodes or other identification 'codes' on them ... drivers license, credit cards, shopping 'club' cards, membership cards .... how long will it be until someone appeals to our desire for simplification by offering an 'EZShop' type card that will function as a consolidation of all of those things ... every time you get a new card that participates in the program, you can 'add' its registration to the master card.
But then you get a little anxious about that one card having all this information about you. And what happens if you lose it? (Never mind that the same thing would happen now if you lost your wallet or purse with all the individual cards). But you are anxious about it .... so then its just a short leap to saying how much more convenient it would be to never have to worry about losing that master card so "wouldn't you like this special bracelet that you can lock around your wrist"?
Then it would only take one liberal state to pass a law that they require their citizens to be embedded with a computer chip identifying them ... and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am we would be living in a science fiction movie.
Not tomorrow and probably not 5 years from now ... but 15 or 20? Definitely this is a possibility.
