You want chips with that?

Are you old enough to remember when politicians presented the idea of an Australia Card, a universal identity card?

It was mooted in 1985. It didn’t go down well with the wider voting community and was abandoned, relegated to the scrap heap of useful but dumb ideas in 1987.

We all thought, or some of us did, that it would be intrusive, infringing on our privacy, a kind of ‘big brother’ is watching concept that sent shivers down people’s spines. Outrage even. Now I think I have changed my tune. But I want to go further, to embrace the singularity, if you like. I have titanium implants in my mouth, so why not something else?

I used to joke that I wanted a chip embedded in my wrist, to not just identify me as me but to have all my personal data.

Tap and go

You know, my tax file number, my myGov details, my Medicare number, etc, etc. Now I think I DO want a chip, a nice little sterile one, preferably stainless steel or titanium, inserted painlessly in my left wrist, so that I can just tap and go through all the vicissitudes of bureaucracy.

What has brought this total about-face and desire to mutilate my body, you ask? And thank you for caring. A few things – the gradual accumulation of indignities and frustrations really. 

Firstly, I am tired, nay weary, of providing new passwords or remembering old ones even, to every agency, municipal department and utility, to then find I have had a glitch in my brain and can’t remember the answer to the very personal and private questions fired at me when I am weary, (I can behave like an overwrought tired toddler) and I get it wrong and then they lock me out of my own account! Temper tantrum ensues and it is ugly indeed. 

Secondly, I am tired of finding my passport is not sufficient proof of who I am despite the fact that to even get a passport I had to jump through multiple identity hoops in the first place. So, in reality, my passport has been devalued, possibly too easily forged. Even my driver’s licence, hacked, through various portals that should have deleted my data years ago, is not sufficient proof of who I am.

Hot chip

Most organisations (government ones) want a third measure of identity, a bank account, a gas bill, the name of my first born, to even speak to me in the first place. A chip could be read by my phone and hey presto! I would have the bureaucratic world at my feet.

Thirdly, if I had a chip, then I could avoid all of those pesky phone calls to an anonymous switchboard, directing me to press 2 or 3 or god knows whatever just to get to a real person after waiting on the end of the phone line for 40-plus minutes listening to either a) propaganda or b) appalling music. I don’t have that many parcels of 40 minutes left to waste in my life. I will never get that time back again and as my demise looms ever closer, time is precious. So is my sanity.

Perhaps there should be a Charter of Human Rights in the Digital Age, an addendum to the one created after WWII, to take into account the fast-changing world.

Our rights would be set in concrete, things like the necessity to talk to a real, live sympathetic human being when dealing with levels of bureaucracy.

Failing that, then a painless chip insertion that follows us from birth to the grave, recognising the unique person that we are, might help. Then we can be processed and sorted quickly, so I can get back to wasting my time on writing epistles. 

Does the modern world seem harder than it needs to be? Why not share your thoughts in the comments section below?

Also read: I’m not old! You are