 The small radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips are pushed under the skin in the hand, and can then be used to open doors or use the photocopier. Hannes Sjoblad, whose electronic business card is on his own chip and can be accessed with a swipe of a smartphone, has the title chief disruption officer at the development. An older woman was more positive about the potential of the technology but saw little point in being chipped just to get through a door. Before trying my chip out, I wanted to know more about the thinking behind it. On the day of the building's official opening, the developer's chief executive was, himself, chipped live on stage.
– Some Swedish workers can now enter their building without a key and make purchases at the office cafe sans card—with a chip implanted in their hand, the BBC reports. Epicenter, a new Swedish office block, is offering employees a miniscule RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip to provide various kinds of access. Not all are accepting it, but it's been offered to some 400 workers, the Independent reports. "We already interact with technology all the time," says bio-hacker Hannes Sjoblad, the "chief disruption officer" at the office block. "Today it's a bit messy—we need pin codes and passwords. Wouldn't it be easy to just touch with your hand? That's really intuitive." A BBC journalist had one inserted and said it wasn't too painful, but neither was it intuitive: His hand needed some twisting to activate an office photocopier. Yet Sjoblad and the Swedish Biohacking Group (which is behind the technology) sees this as just the beginning. They already hold chip-insertion parties at a Stockholm tattoo parlor, which the BBC depicts as part of a trend that's blending humans with technology—including smart watches, glucose-monitoring contact lenses, and the digital BioStamp tattoo that collects data on a person's health. "Some people are horrified by this," admits one advocate. But "years ago there was fear over vaccinations and now it seems perfectly normal to have cells injected into us. That is an early example of bio-hacking." (In development: A birth control chip that could last 16 years.)