cyborg pets

A fairly recent technolgical development is micro chipping pets. This consist of an owner taking his/her own pet to the vet, where the pet would receive a small injection, this injection would contain a minuscule microchip, which would then be injected somewhere on the animal (often the back of the neck for cats or dogs). The chip contains a small number which can is a unique code to specify the pets breed, sex, age and the owners contact details and address. This is a solution for those pets that get lost, and certain places with specific scanning equipment can pick up the unique code.


In lectures, the idea that humans could wear technology, suggested that technology was becoming such a strong part of us and that we are cyborgs. The idea cyborg was contested in tutorials. People disliked the idea of being an actual ‘cyborg’, because it sounded to them as though technology was so invasive, and viewed a cyborg as a part human part machine notion. In lectures Luke said that a kind of cyborg is wearable technology. This is certainly the case of micro chipping our pets, except even more extreme is the idea that this technology isn’t just wearable it’s almost irremovable.

‘Is easy and no errors will be possible, (only vets and specialists could remove the chip, with the right medical equipment and with some difficulty, even for them).'

www.chippet.com/why.htm

Although the technology itself does not directly control the pets movements, the information, the (practically) irremovable chip contains, does give humans a huge amount of control over their pets that they never would have had initially. This means that despite how many times a pet gets lost, they can always be found if they fall into the care of a place that has a scanner which would activate the chip. That includes pounds or anything of the sort. Although finding pets that go astray is usually a positive thing, it is still alarming to witness the type of control humans have over their pets because of such a small insertion of a chip.

The idea of the chips is alarming because of what they could be used for. What is to stop the government placing chips under the skins of humans?

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