The world is ready out of microchips - How humans face for this?

On the one hand was a perfect storm of problems hampering supplies: a global pandemic, a trade war, a blaze at a manufacturing plant and atrocious weather including drought and snowstorms. On the other was the unprecedented demand for one of the world’s most sought-after products – a market worth $40 billion in January this year alone. Even so, the news earlier this year that there was a global shortage of computer chips, pushing up the price of everything from laptops to fridges, took a lot of people by surprise. The crisis has seen nations and companies around the world scrambling to establish more chip-building capacity. It has also shone a light on an industry whose products have become ubiquitous and essential, leaving many to conclude that it is due a fundamental overhaul. For critics, the stranglehold on the market of just a few firms acts as a brake on innovation and increases the industry’s vulnerability to disruption. Some big names are now backing an alternative model – taking the collaborative, open-source principles that have changed the way software is written and applying them to chips. For its proponents, it is only a matter of time before this becomes the new standard. But when the chips are down, does it have what it takes – and what does it mean for us? Computer chips are everywhere – not just in our laptops, desktops and smartphones. They are in the myriad mysterious servers that run our webmail, online bank and other digital services we use daily. They are in many microwaves, televisions, washing machines and watches. The average new car today contains hundreds of them. As technology continues to get closer to merge with our bodies, from the smartphones in our hands to the smartwatches on our wrists to earbuds. Now, it’s getting under our skin literally with a tiny microchip. A human microchip implant is typically an identifying integrated circuit device or RFID (Radio-Frequency IDentification) transponder encased in silicate glass and implanted in the body of a human being. This type of subdermal implant usually contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information contained in an external database, such as personal identification, law enforcement, medical history, medications, allergies, and contact information. In Sweden, thousands have had microchips inserted into their hands. The chips are designed to speed up users’ daily routines and make their lives more convenient — accessing their homes, offices and gyms is as easy as swiping their hands against digital readers. Chips also can be used to store emergency contact details, social media profiles or e-tickets for events and rail journeys. Advocates of the tiny chips say they’re safe and largely protected from hacking, but scientists are raising privacy concerns around the kind of personal health data that might be stored on the devices. Around the size of a grain of rice, the chips typically are inserted into the skin just above each user’s thumb, using a syringe similar to that used for giving vaccinations. Implanting chips in humans has privacy and security implications that go well beyond cameras in public places, facial recognition, tracking of our locations, our driving habits, our spending histories, and even beyond ownership of your data, which poses great challenges for the acceptance of this technology.