So says the Baja Beach owner Conrad Chase, the owner of the first night club to swap VIP cards with an injected VIP chip inside one’s arm. The following video has been made by Drew Hemment director of the Futuresonic Festival.
Reason for implementing this technology: “It has once again shown that the Baja Beach Club is a trend setter.” ~Mr. Chase
Once again, the question I have is more of a “should we do this?” rather than “can we do this?” The early twentieth century was preoccupied with questions of whether or not we can accomplish certain goals with technology. Now that we are capable of executing the tasks we desire, there is a strong need to sit down and discuss why we should be doing the things we do. Some might say, “well, that’s inevitable.” And it is. Some think that if things are going to happen anyways, we, designers, should be the ones to be leading the way in terms of technological development. But what about the ethics?
When I was an undergraduate at UPenn, I took a class in bioethics given by Prof. Glenn McGee. At Penn, they have a whole world class department dedicated to discussions of ethics in the context of bioengineering and the natural sciences.
If we, designers, are to be one of the future “gatekeepers” of technology, there must be a greater discussion about the products we create than what is currently available. I have my own reasons for being uncomfortable with Mr. Chase’s rationale – “It has once again shown that the Baja Beach Club is a trend setter.” I admire his adoption of some really cool technology. He does have a point when he says that it’s another form of body piercing. If we’re piercing our bodies, implanting silicon, and having tattoos everywhere I guess it’s not hard to extrapolate and implant microchips inside ourselves. All the more acceptable when we start to bring up artificial hearts, stents, and blood glucose monitors to read sugar levels and other vitals. However, implanting chips to not worry about bringing credit cards around is quite different from a stent needed to sustain life. For me, the question is, What is a human body? For example, it can range from those who consider it to be just a simple container of the soul to those who consider it the temple of God (or deity) that shouldn’t be tempered with so lightly.
Even in terms of culture, there are those who have no problem with decorating their bodies and those who, say, for religious reasons, take extra caution and maintain a certain discipline/code of behavior or ethics (ex. Jews who circumcise newborn males and cover their heads, Muslim women who cover their faces, people who take on strict diets, etc). What does this type of technology mean for them? For example, would someone with such strong beliefs about their body in the context of their culture or faith be able to have VIP status at the Baja Beach Club? I know it’s a stupid question b/c I’m sure there are other ways to get in as a VIP. I’m just hypothetically talking about the future … cause they say things are inevitable …