Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology already exists to track us wherever we might care to go -- the problem is keeping the sensor up and running, giving off signals all the time from inside of our bodies. Thus far, the biggest technological challenge is energy; a tracking chip needs a power source. Think how annoying it would be to have to plug your arm into the wall to recharge yourself like a pesky cellphone; besides, it would make it near-impossible to thwart kidnappers or retrieve lost kiddies if rescuers didn't find the missing before the charge died. There's also the vexing dilemma of getting the chip and its power source small enough for comfort and aesthetics. Who wants an unsightly chip bulge?

Chris Hables Gray, an associate professor of computer science and the cultural study of science and technology at the University of Great Falls in Montana, says that researchers have been working to find just such a small, self-generating power source by tapping everything from body heat to the electrical pulses in the muscles. There's even been talk of putting teensy-weensy nanotechnology machines to work as miniature waterwheels in the bloodstream so the heart itself could be the power source. The heart running your chip: It's practically poetic.

But now one company claims that it has cracked this power-source conundrum, and that it has a patent on the solution, although executives won't yet reveal the technical details of how it actually works. Applied Digital Solutions didn't invent it, but purchased the patent for a "personal tracking and recovery system," which the company has dubbed Digital Angel.

According to CEO Richard Sullivan, Digital Angel combines GPS wireless communications with biosensors, powered by body heat in the form of a dime-sized chip, which can be embedded in a watch, bracelet or medallion, even under your flesh -- should the FDA approve such an invasive thing.

"It's like a live radio signal all the time," he says. Sullivan sees a $100 billion potential market for the technology, which is still under development with help from researchers at Princeton University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The company will hold a gala in New York in October to show off the prototype, and try to drum up investment to finance actual products.

And the potential applications, should the thing actually work as the company claims it does? Just use your imagination, folks. Sullivan envisions kiddies having their own Digital Angels watching over them in case of a snatching. Or, caretakers installing them in patients with Alzheimer's disease to prevent the old folks from wandering off. And just wait until the military gets a load of this -- one in every soldier to track not only their whereabouts, but their very mortality, in real time. The same would go for employees in extremely hazardous workplaces, such as nuclear power plants.

Come to think of it, a medallion worn around the neck that's powered by your very body heat doesn't seem any more invasive than some of the things that companies already do to their employees, so why not a chip in every last cube!? Better still, dispense with those pesky keycards to get in and out of the office, and just have the whole thing implanted in your left butt cheek.

If you're not already wondering how you and your loved ones made it this far without a single chip implant, just consider all the medical applications. Picture a system that would constantly monitor a heart disease sufferer's pulse rate or a diabetes patient's sugar levels and notify medical help when things were looking dangerous. We accept pacemakers as a necessary and important technology to extend and enhance the quality of lives. How is this any different?

Sullivan brushes off concerns about privacy by promising that the chip-wearer will be able to control when he or she is, uh, switched on or off, although he won't yet say how exactly that will work. The Digital Angel Web site puts it bluntly: "The unit can be turned off by the wearer, thereby making the monitoring voluntary. It will not intrude on personal privacy except in applications applied to the tracking of criminals."

Maybe so, but the potential for abuse is so ludicrously high that it's almost impossible to overstate. You can just see the Michael Douglas-Sharon Stone Hollywood version, where the jealous husband gives an opulent anniversary watch with the chip inside it to his cheating wife, so he can obsessively monitor her movements, her body temperature, the very acceleration of the pounding of her heart rate ... until she figures it out, and puts the chip to work -- against him.

To makers of tracking technologies, these Big Brother worst-case scenarios sound like the same griping that has met all sorts of other advancements we now blithely accept, like Social Security numbers, credit cards that catalog our every purchase and even e-mail.

"We believe that the benefits of the technology to a parent looking for a child at a theme park or a student feeling safe walking across campus, far outweigh some of those concerns," says Tom Turner, senior vice president of marketing and business development for a company called WhereNet, which makes a technology that can be used to find people or objects in a specific, local environment. "It's individual choice."

So far, WhereNet has licensed its technology to companies that make bracelets worn on the wrist or pager-like devices carried in a pocket or purse. It's in use at a water park in Denver and on the campuses of the University of South Florida in Tampa and the University of South Alabama in Mobile. Turner sees a future for such gadgets on cruise ships, in gated communities and at shopping malls.

Brendand Fitzgerald, the president of Microgistics, which makes WalkMate, the device used by college students to alert campus police if they're in danger, also thinks the benefits are greater than the risks. "If you were working in a hazardous industrial environment, you would want to know that you could push a button and have someone help you if you need help. 'I fell into the vat of boiling acid!'" Safety first is a logic that's hard to argue with, even when it starts to veer from help when you need it to totally transparent surveillance when you're at work.

And, like almost everyone else I talked to in this field, Applied Digital Systems' Sullivan dismisses nagging doubts about what it means to literally wire ourselves up. "By our own nature, we tend to avoid things we know the least about and gravitate towards those that we do know. Some of the things that have made the most positive contributions to our lives are the things that there are the most concern about. Like any technology, it's really in the hands of the user," he says. Translation: it's Galileo vs. the church all over again.

OK, Dr. Jekyll, you've convinced me. I'm ready for my implant. Let me be the first to sign up for my very own chip body modification. What list do I put my name on? In fact, I want my chip secured on the outside of my skin where I can show it off to everyone as a sign of just how wired I've become -- surely it will be the next big thing filling the void left by the waning trendiness of tattoos, piercing, scarification: chipification.

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