8/22/2011

Whatever the next stage of integration between humans and tech brings, it will bring it to the developing world before the first world.

(So I've been having some free time recently, why don't I get in my six blog posts for the year.)

Here is news:

In Mexico, demand is rising at a healthy pace for radio 'locator' implants as a protection against kidnapping. The company featured in the article, ''Xega," says sales have gone up 40% in the last two years.

And, their executive notes, "Thirty percent of our clients arrive after someone in their family has already experienced a kidnapping"...

Awareness of the RFID implants is promoted by heavy media coverage in Mexico, spiked by a high-profile incident in which famous political figure "Boss Diego" Fernandez de Cevallos experienced surgery mid-kidnapping to take his implant out of his arm.

Mexico is under-appreciated as a behavioral future-frontier-scape. What I think is significant about this trend is that the break-down of law and order is driving an embrace of weird tech by the middle class. When truly human-transformative tech suddenly drops into reality, should we look to the fringe and unstable societies to field-test the future while the G8 world is still sending weathermen out to bake cookies on sidewalks? I bet yes.

What is not significant about this trend is the tech itself. Because as the article continues on to mention, actually the tech doesn't really work. The implant signal is very weak and useful only if the subscriber has their companion GPS transmitter on their person.

Nobody has made an actual GPS beacon with always-on performance that could fit in a body without taking out a kidney first. Without the transmitter, the implants being sold in Mexico now wouldn't make it out of most basements, which is probably where kidnapped people will end up.