Three Square Market was a test case, the first company in the US to offer implants to employees on a public stage. But the highly charged reaction, which linked the devices not only to pernicious surveillance but to a vision of tech-apocalypse, raised a question that Österlund is still grappling with: is the world ready for technology to get under the skin?
Microchip implants are essentially cylindrical bar codes that, when scanned, transmit a unique signal through a layer of skin. Mostly, they have been used to organize products or warehouses or identify livestock and stray pets, though there has been some human experimentation.
In 1998, Kevin Warwick, a professor of cybernetics at Reading University, had a chip implanted in his hand both to demonstrate that it was possible, and as a way of exploring the transhumanist idea that fusing technology with the body is the next step in humanity’s evolution.
Österlund first became aware of microchipping technology several years after Warwick’s project, when his friend made a copy of his dog’s chip and implanted it under his own skin. They were both part of the body modification scene in Sweden and frequently experimented with new techniques, such as branding and septum piercing. “The dog chip was kind of a practical joke, so that when my friend went to the vet he could be identified as his own pet labrador, or whatever", Österlund told me. “But the idea of doing something more with implants stuck with me.
In 2013, Österlund stumbled upon a German company selling industrial-grade microchips online. Unlike the chips used in pets, which can only transmit a single identification number, these devices were enabled with a communications protocol called NFC, which can be programmed to perform simple tasks.
Österlund ordered a batch and wrote a basic program that paired his Samsung 5 to the microchip, so that it would automatically call his wife when he picked up the phone. On the first implant attempt, Österlund accidentally broke the tiny fuse in the chip while sterilizing it. But the second attempt stuck – when he touched his phone, it automatically triggered a call to his wife.
“It was like my body was online,” he said. “It was my very own Johnny Mnemonic moment.”
Excited, Österland reached out to a friend called Hannes Sjöblad, who was associated with the transhumanist community in Sweden. Sjöblad was impressed with Österland’s experiment and invited him to hold a demonstration at Epicenter, a tech-focused co-working space in Stockholm where Sjöblad was the “chief disruption officer”.
Other young innovators and startup founders at Epicenter were intrigued with Österlund’s implant, and soon, he and Sjöblad were hosting “chips and beer” evenings. Österlund would implant microchips over alcoholic beverages and share ideas about what new cyborg applications were possible.
There are other companies pushing the limits of what microchip implants can do, most notably the Seattle-based Dangerous Things, which sells a variety of bio-enabled devices, including multi-colored LED lights that light up beneath the skin. But Österlund believes that Sweden will be the focal point of cyborg innovation. “The national railway is already compatible with my chips and as a country we are planning to be totally cashless by 2023,” he told me. “I guess here you can see an example of how it can be done.”
But Urs Gasser, executive director at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, believes scaling up beyond the Swedish tech-hub environment to a broader market will be more legally and ethically tenuous than Österlund might expect.