General Discussion

Over the next 10 to 15 years your government begins to promote the process of microchipping, where by a citizen is implanted with a microchip for tracking and data reasons.

The microchip is heavily promoted and gains widespread media saturation, particularly as the government and perhaps some experts promote it's usage and benefits for safety and the combatting of crime and terrorism.

Eventually the shock of this seeming outlandish idea wears off, in equal amounts are people who disagree and agree for it's usage, however the large majority are unsure or simply don't care. over 90% of people agree the implantation of a microchip MUST be consented by the reciever.

A few more years pass, a major terrorist attack occurs on your countries soil, thousands are killed and the nation is in shock. Microchipping recieves massive attention now. A law is passed shortly after that all newborns must be microchipped. Due to the terrorist attack, opinions have changed on microchipping, about 50% believe it MUST be implemented.

You are a young adult, your wife has just given birth, several hours later a government offical steps into the ward, he has been making the rounds to all parents of newly-born babies. He informs you of the new laws of microchipping and also informs you that you do not have a choice.

How do you react?

*feel free to offer your own scenarios on top of the brief back-story I've given if it helps you make an answer*

You're obviously aiming to make microchipping look like an Orwellian practice aimed at enslaving the population.

Bush got re-elected. Seriously.

If I were a dictator I wouldn't waste money microchipping a lethargic slave-population when I can easily control them using TV and cheap credit.

I will have long since left the country formerly known as the "U.S.A." when micro-chipping is required.

Wouldn't it be funny if Orwell got it right, just 100 years off?  2084 just doesn't sound as ominous though when written in 1949.

I honestly don't see the big deal about it.  We already microchip our pets so when they are scanned they can be returned.  So what if a country provides microchips to determine who is eligible for government services.  As long as the chips were healthy it wouldn't matter. 

Heck I wouldn't mind having one that linked to my account so I wouldn't have to input my credit card.  I am always misplacing my wallet.  No more ID Card, No more Driver License, no more carrying credit cards.  All sounds okay to me. 

But (and this is a big But) the ability to uses these chips for nefarious means would need to be completely blocked.  And I am not just talking about the government (tracking us) which I don't really care that much about (which is obvious since I am in the Military and get regularly tracked anyways ) They would need to make sure that people couldn't make usage of the chip in some manner that was bad.  Like stealing your information with a scanner or something. 

Originally posted by daeandor

Wouldn't it be funny if Orwell got it right, just 100 years off?  2084 just doesn't sound as ominous though when written in 1949.

Either Orwell was naive or he karikaturized mass-manipulation to prove his point.

It's perfectly obvious that all the techniques described in 1984 are overly complicated. People can be pushed around in a lot more simpler ways.

  The application of tracking in and of itself isn't evil. Its just using it in a bad way that bothers me. Personally I'm with Cabe though. At least I won't lose my identification. I know if something bad can happen it will. I also know the technology will be exploited but all technology is. I can live with that implication.

I dont remember if it was a chip or just  a barcode but in the left behind series it was a sign o fthe appocylapse and was like the mark of the beast.

The american sheeple will do whatever they're told to do...they will get chipped, no questions asked.

This scenario reminds me of the part in the movie Apocalypse Now when Col. Kurtz (Brando) says to Capt. Willard (Sheen):

"...I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.

Perhaps the members of underground movement - the true Patriot Movement that is already forming - will have that kind of strength and genius...to hack off every Verichipped arm!